Articles

Tanzanian Public Health Sector with a potential to reduce or eliminate stock-outs of five drugs (four dosage forms of ACTs and Quinine Injectable) in all health facilities by introducing a programme called SMS for Life pilot project. The Ministry is implementing this project in collaboration with Novartis. The goal of this project is to develop a flexible and scalable solution to bring up-to-date accurate visibility of anti-malarials stock levels of the health facilities. This visibility is supporting the districts in better stock management and the elimination of stock-outs.

 SMS for Life project is an SMS based reporting system aimed at providing weekly health facility stock levels of ACT and quinine injectables. The training began in February with 10 regions of Ruvuma, Mwanza, Mbeya, Mtwara, Singida, Kagera, Morogoro, Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Pwani. Districts involved in the first round are situated at the regions’ head offices (except for Morogoro) so as to allow regional health officials to learn as to how the system works as well as experience the actual training session.