In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), inefficient supply chain management can lead to stockouts of medicine at public health facilities, complicating the treatment and management of a range of diseases. Poor and rural communities that depend on these facilities for health services and medicines are most affected. Patients must often make repeated costly trips to health facilities to fill their prescriptions, and when there are stockouts patients default on treatment. Given the high health burden of communicable diseases in SSA, such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, stockouts are a serious challenge in the region. Mobile technology presents an opportunity to address this challenge by enabling access to higher quality healthcare services and reducing the cost of healthcare delivery for governments and private providers.

In this case study, we present the experience of the Vodacom subsidiary, Mezzanine, to demonstrate how mobile operators can address inefficiencies in the medicine supply chain. This case study describes Mezzanine’s broader strategy and portfolio of digital health tools, and demonstrates how the company has leveraged public-private partnerships to provide holistic digital health solutions at national scale.

Mezzanine’s Stock Visibility Solution (SVS) enables health facilities to transition from inefficient paper-based stock reporting processes to digital data collection and real-time reporting. SVS reduces stockouts and expands public access to essential medicines, such as antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, TB medications, and vaccines. Since its launch in South Africa in 2014, SVS has been implemented in over 3,500 health facilities in South Africa, Zambia, and Nigeria. As of June 2018, over 12 million stock level reports have been submitted through SVS.