The Narok County cross-functional health team at their inaugural meeting.
The Challenge Initiative’s (TCI) East Africa hub has been reengaging with its 63 supported counties, cities, and districts across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania – setting the stage for accelerated implementation in the year ahead. The first quarter of 2026 included renewing political commitments to family planning and confronting one of the most persistent barriers to strong programming: data quality.
A story from Narok County in Kenya illustrates why this work matters. When the TCI team met with Narok County’s Health Management Team – led by County Director of Health Dr. Francis Kioo – the agenda was a quarterly performance review. The data on contraceptive commodities from December 2025 through March 2026 revealed that the number of additional clients served had dropped by 2%.
A 2% drop may sound small, but for a county committed to expanding access to family planning services, it was a signal worth investigating. Rather than accepting the numbers at face value, the team dug deeper. What emerged was a familiar but solvable problem: the drop was not primarily driven by fewer women accessing services. It was driven by poor data capture and reporting at the facility level. In other words, clients were being served, but those services weren’t making it into the records – a gap that, left unaddressed, distorts planning, procurement, and accountability at every level.
Turning Insight Into Action
With TCI’s support, the county convened a cross-functional team of health managers, pharmacists, and health records officers to collectively diagnose the problem and coordinate a response. The team identified the facilities most affected by incomplete reporting and assigned clear ownership for follow-up. The County Pharmacist and Health Records Information Officer were each tasked with supporting those facilities to improve the timeliness and accuracy of their submissions.
Dr. Kioo expressed particular appreciation for TCI’s technical assistance in surfacing the discrepancy between contraceptive commodity reports and actual consumption data. These two data streams should tell the same story: how much stock came in, and how much was used. When they don’t align, the result is inaccurate forecasting, unreliable procurement orders, and, ultimately, the kind of shortages that turn away women seeking services.
Closing this gap isn’t just a bookkeeping fix. Accurate consumption data is the foundation of a well-functioning contraceptive supply chain.
TCI’s approach to commodity data integrity is consistent across all three countries. In Kenya, the team works alongside county pharmacists to track stock levels in real time, enabling redistribution where shortages emerge. In Uganda, TCI supported training for district health teams on using consumption data and stock records to generate more accurate supply forecasts. In Tanzania – where broad-based government budget cuts have strained health programs – TCI’s engagement with national commodity coordination bodies helped local governments stay informed about the national supply pipeline and submit timely, complete requisitions.
Getting the numbers right in Narok and across the region helps ensure that every woman who seeks family planning services is able to get her method of choice.
