Healthy Markets CoP Session - Nigeria - April 26, 2023

The Healthy Markets Community of Practice (HMCoP) is a group dedicated to generating awareness of market development and private sector engagement work happening in different countries and for participants to leave with a greater understanding and appreciation of the country’s health market. The April meeting continued to discuss Nigeria and presenters included FHM Engage, U.S. Pharmacopeia, and SEMA Reproductive Health.

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The April meeting marked the fourth convening of the Healthy Markets Community of Practice. To start the session, UNFPA's Senior Policy Advisor Ben Light introduced a new UNFPA policy regarding the sale of reproductive health commodities. Currently, UNFPA mobilizes resources to distribute and donate reproductive health supplies, predominantly contraceptives, to governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and not-for-profit organizations.  The new policy will allow, in certain circumstances, the sale of some of those commodities to implementing partners in government agencies but could apply to the larger NGOs in certain countries. While this policy has not been finalized it is expected to roll out by the end of this year. UNFPA recognizes that there is a need to think more about the health of markets and this policy is an attempt to try and take steps towards more viable commercial markets.  We will keep you posted on any updates!

After remarks from Ben Light, the HMCoP shifted the discussion to Nigeria. After an initial session focusing on Nigeria in January, participants were eager to continue the conversation, expand upon what was previously discussed, and explore new topics. 

FHM Engage Chief of Party in Nigeria Mariya Saleh gave an overview of the market description work currently being conducted on maternal and newborn health (MNH) in Ebonyi. Her presentation provided an opportunity to consider connections between family planning (FP) and MNH challenges and how organizations might enhance efforts in FP to improve MNH results. This is a topic we hope to return to in the future. 

Next, U.S. Pharmacopeia Chief of Party, Mopa Esuga presented work from USAID's, Promoting the Quality of Medicines Program Plus (PQM+). PQM+ aims to sustainably strengthen medical product quality assurance systems in low- and middle-income countries. The program provides technical assistance to build in country capacity of medicines regulatory authorities and quality assurance systems. Moving forward, further discussions are needed to advocate for local manufacturing of FP products in Nigeria as well as other countries in Africa.

The final presenters included SEMA Reproductive Health's Nigeria Country Lead Amina Ja'afar and their Head of Data and Analytics Alexis Heaton. The focus of their presentation was their work on sexual and reproductive markets (SRH) in Nigeria. One of their major findings is the prevalence of gaps in private sector data. Currently, SEMA is looking to understand more about what happens with SRH products through the private sector and are exploring export data and the flow of products from countries of origin to countries like Nigeria. This work in ongoing and they hope to share more concrete data on a future call. 

Overall, these topics prompted a lot of engagement during the session and we were pleased to see multiple connections being made between participants as a result of the meeting. We hope participation with this group continues to remain high and that organizations share the progress of their work.

We are excited that there was such a positive response to this session, and we look forward to continued participation in future sessions from everyone that attended. 

Resources

Please use this link to access the resources shared in the chat during the session. You'll find information on the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition and information shared by Palladium's Cindi Cisek on how private sector data was integrated into the discussion around commodity sourcing and resource gaps in the Kenya/ESHE project case study. 

Please feel free to share this information with anyone that you think would benefit from our group.

We are interested in hearing from those of you that have been engaged in the HMCoP. Please use this survey as an opportunity to let us know your thoughts and if there are any changes you would like to see. 

Future Meetings

The next HMCoP will take place on May 31, 2023 and will focus on Pakistan. We plan to offer a hybrid format and will soon share details for local Karachi-based participants to join in-person. If you would like to take part in this session, please email Elizabeth Peña at (epena@FHM-Engage.org) or Farhan Yusuf (fyusuf@FHM-Engage.org).

Questions?

Please email Jessica Jones (jjones@chemonics.com) or Elizabeth Peña (epena@FHM-Engage.org).