Country Highlights

Tanzania began distribution of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the public sector in October 2005. Prior to the public-sector program’s launch, only about 1,500 patients were being treated with ART, all in the private sector. It is estimated that more than 400,000 people are eligible for ART nationwide. Under the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Tanzania received approximately 60% of the value of all antiretroviral drugs in 2005, 2006, and 2007. In the program’s first year, the Ministry of Health’s National AIDS Control Program (NACP) set a target of 44,000 patients for ART and launched the program in more than 100 sites. As of October 2008, the program has reached more than 170,000 patients and access has been expanded to more than 700 sites. 

Tanzania’s supply chain is largely centralized through the Medical Stores Department (MSD), a para-statal agency tasked with procuring, storing, and distribution of drugs and medical supplies to Tanzania’s 121 mainland districts. While the MOH encourages a multi-sectoral approach to addressing HIV and AIDS, all donor and other stakeholder partners support a single set of standard treatment guidelines (STGs) and all participate in the centralized distribution system through MSD.

MSD distributes all related products to support a comprehensive HIV and AIDS program, including HIV test kits, STI drugs, ARVs, essential drugs, and laboratory support. Many of these product categories have been integrated into the Integrated Logistics System (ILS), which brings together essential drugs, family planning and condoms, STI drugs, and some laboratory products into a single re-ordering system. Thus far, ARVs and HIV test kits have been ordered and distributed more frequently than the ILS products. However, the system has been redesigned in January 2008 to reflect the basic operation principles of the ILS, e.g., quarterly ordering/resupply, the design of the ordering form, etc.

Working with agencies of the Ministry of Health, SCMS’s key objectives in Tanzania are to:

• Information Sharing – Build a trusted information system that delivers products in a way that is reliable, consistent, and easy to use.
• Capacity Building – Strengthen the capacity of the central Ministry of Health to collect and analyze data, and to quantify and forecast needs.
• Procurement and Distribution – Meet the unprecedented procurement needs and facilitate the coordinated function of donors.
• Cross Cutting Issues – Place Supply Chain Monitoring Advisors in the field for information-gathering and sharing, and to serve as a critical part of an “early warning system”, capable of identifying and reporting potential or impending logistics system breakdowns and related issues before they impede on ART service delivery

Value of commodities delivered as of September 2008: Over $27 million

Progress to date:

• Currently there are about 700 care and treatment sites and about 170 thousand patients on treatment.
• SCMS has delivered over $16M worth of ARVs, HIV test kits and CD4 reagents.
• SCMS, under the leadership of NACP, redesigned the logistics system for ARVs and HIV Test kits to accommodate the program scale up plan, facilitated the TOT and printing of SOPs and LMIS tools.
• SCMS in collaboration with partners involved in care and treatment (EGPAF, MSH and ICAP, CHAI) had trained 10 regions on the redesigned logistics systems. SCMS is the organizer of the training,