Working to ensure everyone has the option to choose how and when to have children

Sexual and reproductive health is an inalienable right for every person. UNFPA promotes access to condoms, modern contraceptives, medications, and equipment for family planning, maternal health services, and the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Ensuring the supply of reproductive health products involves a chain of processes that requires planning, strategic procurement, and technical and operational oversight for continuous distribution and monitoring. It is essential to ensure a consistent supply, avoid shortages, and ensure that distribution reaches even the most remote, especially rural, areas. Budgets must include not only the procurement of supplies but also the logistics needed for effective local implementation. The supplies acquired must be sufficient in both quantity and quality to smoothly meet existing demand. With these basic components, a health system can protect the investments made.

Securing supplies is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for realizing reproductive rights.

Since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made significant progress in guaranteeing access to family planning, including modern contraceptive methods. All countries in the region have public policies and offer modern contraceptive methods free of charge. 

The list of covered methods has progressively expanded, contributing to an increase in the prevalence of contraceptive use. As a result, by early 2020, the proportion of women of reproductive age with unmet family planning needs (one of UNFPA’s transformative goals) was only 11%, and the region was among those most likely to achieve the target of reducing that indicator to zero by 2030.

Our Challenge

However, several challenges and threats persist in the region regarding access to contraceptives: 

1. Women's access to contraceptives in Latin America and the Caribbean still heavily depends on out-of-pocket purchases at pharmacies. Although this has decreased, more than half of contraceptives used are still bought using household income.

2. Public investments in acquiring and distributing contraceptives have been inconsistent. Without sustained and progressive investments, it will not be possible to expand coverage and access to contraceptives.

3. The prices of contraceptives are higher in Latin America and the Caribbean compared to other regions. Governments still face difficulties in making purchases at affordable prices.

These challenges were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the global supply chain, affecting countries' supply levels, limiting the availability of sexual and reproductive health services, and in many cases, even restricting people’s movement and physical access to facilities. It also significantly impacted household income, reducing both earnings and spending capacity, including the purchase of contraceptives.

As a result, a year after the pandemic was declared, around 20 million women in Latin America and the Caribbean had stopped using contraceptive methods. This increased the indicator for Unmet Need for Modern Contraceptives to 17.7%, representing a setback of approximately 30 years in the region's progress.

The Opportunity

UNFPA is capable of providing technical support to governments and partners through:

1. Workshops on securing sexual and reproductive health supplies, based on evidence: These are high-level management programs where lessons learned for ensuring reproductive health supplies are analyzed. Participants identify innovation and improvement opportunities adapted to each country’s conditions.

2. Master plans for securing supplies and medications: Participatory planning with health ministry officials and other stakeholders to define goals, expected outcomes, and short-, medium-, and long-term activities and indicators, identifying barriers at every stage of the process.

3. Supply needs planning: Includes support for product selection, calculating required quantities, and budgeting purchases, as well as defining coverage targets and expected outcomes.

4. Procurement processes for sexual and reproductive health supplies: UNFPA has an online platform that helps governments purchase pre-qualified quality supplies and equipment at very competitive prices. UNFPA also provides countries with technical assistance to strengthen procurement processes.

5. Strengthening information and logistics systems: Establishes the foundation for improving supply storage and distribution processes; formulates and monitors compliance with best practice standards; trains professionals for optimal management; and develops integrated systems that provide real-time information on all supplies across the chain and service levels.

6. Utilization and control processes: Establishes mechanisms to promote rational use of sexual health supplies; designs alternative methodologies for the provision and dispensing of supplies tailored to the needs of specific groups.

7. Strengthening regional policies on sexual and reproductive health supplies and medicines: Engages supranational organizations to create agreements in the procurement process to provide benefits such as better prices, long-term agreements with manufacturers, shared technical specifications and quality controls among several countries within regional blocs, in a framework that streamlines processes and reduces costs.

Our Strategy

As the leading UN agency for securing sexual and reproductive health supplies, UNFPA has developed a Global Strategy for 2021–2030 called Supplies Partnership. This strategy prioritizes sustaining the progress made in the most underserved countries that have received direct support from UNFPA through donations and programmatic activities.

UNFPA’s main goals for securing sexual and reproductive health supplies in the region focus on optimizing the number of countries with trained personnel across all stages of the supply chain and strengthening logistics information systems, ensuring countries have integrated systems that provide comprehensive data on all supplies at all levels where they are used.

More Highlights:

• Choices Not Chance: UNFPA Family Planning Strategy, 2012–2020.
  Published: 2013

• Global Programme to Support Reproductive Health Commodity Security.
  Published: 2010 

Consultation Resources and Publications:

• What is the Global Programme on Reproductive Health Commodity Security?
  Published: 2014
• Financial Protection Mechanisms for Securing Sexual and Reproductive Health Supplies. 
  Published: 2021
• Coordinating International Cooperation in Reproductive Health: Political and Financial Commitment from the Experience of the Nicaraguan Health Fund (Fonsalud).
  Published: 2021
• Securing Sexual and Reproductive Health Supplies in Honduras Through the Update of the National Essential Medicines List and Technical Data Sheets.
  Published: 2021
• Territorial Health Strategies to Promote the Use of Intrauterine Devices in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  Published: 2021
• Estimated Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sexual and Reproductive Health in Mexico.
  Published: 2021