Country Overview

The Government of Côte d’Ivoire created a special ministry, the Ministry of HIV/AIDS, to coordinate the national HIV/AIDS response and mobilize national and international resources.

Côte d’Ivoire has the highest HIV prevalence rate in the West African region, estimated at 4.7 percent in adults ages 15-49. In 2001, the Government of Côte d’Ivoire created a special ministry, the Ministry of HIV/AIDS, to coordinate the national HIV/AIDS response and mobilize national and international resources. The government has also mandated each ministry to create a multi-sectoral committee to focus on sector-specific HIV/AIDS-related responses and to improve overall coordination with the Ministry of HIV/AIDS.

SCMS signed a landmark agreement with the Ministry of Health to work together to ensure that people living with HIV/AIDS receive a reliable supply of quality HIV/AIDS medicines. The memorandum of understanding defines the roles and responsibilities of SCMS and the central pharmacy (PSP) for procuring, importing, storing, and distributing all PEPFAR-supported commodities for HIV/AIDS programs.

Key Objectives

• Improve supply-chain capacity by improving prescribing practices of service providers, commodity storage and management, and coordination of funding flows to purchase essential commodities
• Improve the accuracy of commodity information at all levels in the system
• Encourage the development of a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS program scale-up plan
• Develop and implement a system that provides timely information about inventory and consumption of commodities at PSP districts and sites

Activities and Impact

Value of commodities delivered as of December 2008: $32.8 million

Logistics management information systems: In Côte d’Ivoire, the Ministry of HIV/AIDS has been helping NGOs develop tools for more efficient data gathering, particularly at the rural level. To support this effort, SCMS worked collaboratively with HIV/Alliance Côte d’Ivoire, a local NGO dedicated to community mobilization, to test the effectiveness of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in improving reporting of community mobilization indicators. The PDAs have markedly reduced delays in the transmission and accuracy of data.

SCMS also worked with the Ministry of Health to design a standardized paper-based system for recording treatment information on ARVs, drugs for opportunistic infections, and laboratory commodities at any type of facility. The new system is comprehensive and collaborative, benefiting logistics flow for other major HIV/AIDS donor organizations. It takes into account technology constraints so that everyone can contribute data. The number of centers reporting has increased, and the accuracy of the information received has improved—enabling the PSP to better manage national quantification of ARV needs and reducing stockouts and product expiries.

Human resource capacity: SCMS has worked with PEPFAR implementing partners and the country’s Ministry of Health to build human resource capacity in LMIS and forecasting, —training over 500 pharmacists countrywide.