GAVI Immunization Supply Chain Strategy: Data For Management

In December 2012, the GAVI Board recognized the need for the Alliance to strengthen its coordination and support for immunization supply chain performance at global and country levels. To this end, the Alliance assembled a task force to develop an immunization supply chain strategy. After investigating key challenges along the immunization supply chain, the task force created four priority working groups for the strategy development process: (1) People and Practices (2) Data for Management (3) Cold Chain Strengthening and (4) System Optimization. This forum will focus on #2 Data for Management, and the priority working group developing this part of strategy would like your input on how the GAVI Alliance can enable the use of data for management along the immunization supply chain to improve the availability and viability of vaccines at the point of delivery. Throughout the month of February, we will be sharing working documents and outputs of this process via this forum, as well as asking you to engage in a multi-part discussion. To kick-off the discourse, I would like to pose two questions: • What is the role of the Alliance: what should countries and partners expect the Alliance to do over the next five years in the area of data for management as it relates to immunization supply chains? • What data, systems or technologies are needed to better manage immunization supply chains? Please share stories of what has worked and what has not.