Procurement of Pharmaceutical Products

Practice Pointer

To identify the channel to use for sourcing health products, please refer to the Health Procurement Architecture. If you are unable to find the product category under the Health Procurement Architecture, please contact the GHPC Health Procurement Services Team, based in UNDP, Copenhagen.

The UNDP Bureau for Management Services (BMS) Office of Procurement (OP) has established multiple Long-Term Agreements (LTAs) with commercial partners (manufacturers & suppliers/wholesalers) for the supply of the medicines that meet the minimum UNDP quality assurance requirements.

UNDP has LTAs established for adult antiretroviral (ARV) medicines, adult and pediatric first-line anti-TB medicines, all malaria medicines, medicines for managing STIs and opportunistic infections, medicines to treat Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, as well as a range of other essential medicines and medicines for treating non-communicable disease (NCDs), such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancers.

All LTAs for health products that have been established centrally by the GHPC are closed and are only available for use by the GHPC HPS team.

The GHPC procurement team in Copenhagen conducts the procurement process on behalf of the CO for Global Fund programmes and for other health programmes.

Practice Pointer

GHPC processes the requests for medicines semesterly, based on the consolidated demands of HPAP validated items.

Where urgent needs are identified outside of this schedule, the UNDP CO can send the request to HPS team focal point with copy to the GFPHST HPM focal point.

Beyond these UNDP LTAs, UNDP engages the services of other UN agencies to support procurement of pediatric ARV medicines and medicines to treat drug-resistant TB.

ARV medicines: pediatric formulations

UNDP has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Supply Division for sourcing pediatric antiretroviral medicines. For product selection, please refer to UNICEF online catalogue.

The COs/Project Management Units (PMUs) can submit the request for cost estimate to UNICEF psid@unicef.org by following the guideline here.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis medicines: all formulations

In light of the specificities of drug-resistant TB medicines, all TB medicines to treat drug-resistant TB must be procured through the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility (GDF). UNDP COs source these medicines through UNOPS/GDF Stop TB Partnership by piggybacking their LTA with the procurement agency (i.e., iPlus Solutions). A copy of the agreement is available here. If GDF changes its procurement agents based on the outcome of the competitive procurement process, UNDP COs will be informed accordingly.

To be consistent with the policies of other international funding sources, all procurement of medicines to treat multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), which is financed by the Global Fund, must be conducted through the Stop TB Partnership’s GDF. This is in adherence with the Global Fund 13th Board Decision of 2006. A step by step guideline to process the request through GDF is available here and here. For product selection of SLD, please refer to GDF Product Catalog | Stop TB Partnership.

Practice Pointer

Where UNDP relies on other United Nations agencies to assist with the procurement of specific categories of health products and where there are specific cases in which these UN agencies are unable to provide support, alternative arrangements will need to be made to procure products which are compliant with UNDP quality assurance requirements. In this case, the GHPC Health Procurement Services team will need to be informed, and can advise the CO on how to proceed.