Overview
Women, girls, and other marginalized groups need lifesaving sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, whether they live in stable or crisis-affected settings. Humanitarian crises disrupt SRH supply chains, impeding the delivery of life-saving SRH services, and derailing investments in national SRH supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic underscores that all countries are vulnerable to emergencies. We must therefore build resilient SRH supply chains that can withstand, adapt to, and recover from shocks like humanitarian crises to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health supplies in all contexts.
Co-hosted by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises and the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, this panel launched a joint advocacy brief developed by these coalitions containing recommendations for governments, donors, and implementing agencies from development and humanitarian settings to improve access to universal health care by focusing on supply chain strengthening at the points where humanitarian and development work converge. It also presented several examples of SRH supply chain interventions in the humanitarian-development nexus at global, regional, and national scales that exemplify some of the recommendations made in the advocacy brief.
Speakers
- Sarah Rich, Women’s Refugee Commission: Building resilient supply chains for SRH in the humanitarian-development nexus: Recommendations to improve supply chain preparedness and recovery
- Branwen Millar, UNFPA Asia Pacific Regional Office: Strengthening preparedness for better humanitarian response: UNFPA and DFAT’s Asia-Pacific Regional Humanitarian Response Initiative
- Frank Roijmans, i+solutions: Revitalizing supply chains and logistics for SRH and SGBV commodities up to the last mile in Central Africa
