• Editors' Summary
• Credits

1. A New Look at Logistics
• Securing Supply
• What is Logistics
• Benefits of Better Logistics
• What Programs Can Do
2. Clients Come First
3. People and Performance
4. The Role of Information
5. Forecasting and Procurement
6. Distribution
7. Toward Contraceptive Security

• Figures
• Tables
• Side-bars
• Bibliography

• Programs face funding crisis
• Benefits of better logistics
• Improving staff performance
• Tips on building policy support
• Checklist: Assessing the supply chain
• How to make accurate forecasts
• Push or pull distribution
• The commercial sector can help

• POPLINE
• Media/Materials Clearinghouse
• Other issues
• To order copies
• CCP Home Page

This issue of Population Reports was prepared in collaboration with the DELIVER Project of John Snow, Inc.

Published by the Population Information Program, Center for Communication Programs, The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA

A New Look at Logistics

For family planning programs, a consistent supply of contraceptives does not happen by itself. Consistent supply results from a well-managed logistics system and from adequate and reliable funding. Logistics management is not just a set of operations to move products from one place to another but rather a key element in helping clients meet their reproductive health needs.

In the commercial sector strong logistics management, by helping to meet customers’ needs, earns customer loyalty, boosts corporate profits, and increases the firm’s market share. Similarly, family planning programs that improve their logistics management systems satisfy more clients, become more efficient, and achieve program goals.

Family planning clients often depend on ready access to contraceptives even more than consumers depend on commercial products. In the commercial sector a product stockout may inconvenience customers and lose revenue for the company. In family planning programs, however, contraceptive stockouts cause clients to discontinue their preferred methods or to stop using family planning altogether (35, 62, 70). The result can be unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS.

Also, family planning programs that fail to provide continuous access to contraception can lose credibility with their clients and acquire a reputation for unreliability. Simply put, “No product, no program” (49).

In the past decade a growing number of countries have started to improve their family planning logistics systems. For example, Peru strengthened its logistics system after 1990, when nationwide stockouts occurred after a shipment of contraceptives was abandoned in a customs warehouse (60). Similarly, Jordan improved logistics management after 1997, when IUDs were over-ordered and 7,000 were destroyed because they had passed their labeled expiration date (116). Also, the Philippines began focusing more on logistics in the early 1990s, when nearly five years’ worth of contraceptive supplies expired on the shelves in some provinces while severe understocks occurred in others because forecasting data were poor (82).

Philip Lieberman/Brown University Like this health worker in rural Nepal, family planning service providers and their clients depend on the country’s logistics system to provide enough supplies to meet demand. In many countries demand for family planning is rising faster than supply.

How can family planning programs meet the challenge to improve logistics? In 2000 the Family Planning Logistics Management (FPLM) Project, now the DELIVER Project, of John Snow, Inc. (JSI) published Programs That Deliver: Logistics’ Contributions to Better Health in Developing Countries (49). The JSI report details how policy-makers and program managers can strengthen family planning logistics systems. It is based on the extensive experience of JSI and other logistics management experts over the past three decades in providing technical assistance to family planning programs in developing countries.

This issue of Population Reports is based on the JSI report. Examples in this report, primarily from family planning, can apply to all health service delivery programs. Statements that appear without references reflect the experience and expert opinion expressed in the JSI report. Readers may find Programs That Deliver on the Internet in the monograph section of the publications page at http://www.deliver.jsi.comhttp://www.deliver.jsi.com or order the printed report from JSI by writing to DELIVER Project Publications, 1616 N. Fort Myer Drive, 11th floor, Arlington, VA 22209, USA, or by e-mail to deliver_pubs@jsi.com.