Stop Stock-Outs

A web- and SMS-based platform for tracking the availability of essential medicines across sub-Saharan Africa.

In the summer of 2009, I received a fellowship from the Open Society Institute to provide technical consulting to Health Action International (HAI) in Kenya. My focus was supporting the Stop Stock-outs campaign, which aimed to ensure access to essential medicines and expose inefficiencies in drug distribution systems. Active in five sub-Saharan countries, the campaign relied on shared technology and coordinated data collection during its "Pill Check Week." The result of my work was the Pill Check Mapping System, developed in collaboration with a Zambia-based OSI fellow.

Data was gathered from two primary sources: direct calls to public health facilities and SMS reports sent by individuals experiencing medicine stock-outs. I designed a simple, user-tested SMS format to ensure accurate and efficient data collection. HAI communications managers introduced this format at public forums, and it was later promoted by local radio personalities to reach a wider audience.

We used Ushahidi—an open-source crisis mapping platform—to visualize the data, though we customized it to enable automatic plotting and streamline the process. After just one week of nationwide data collection, we held a press conference in downtown Nairobi. The resulting media coverage was substantial and continuous. For the first time in Kenyan history, a Ministry of Health official publicly acknowledged the severity of the stock-out issue and committed to addressing it.

The campaign has since been featured in major international outlets, including Business Week and PC World.