Focus Areas
Increase Access through Supply Chain Management
DKT International is dedicated to improving the health of global supply chains to bring sexual and reproductive health products to people around the world. Through strategic partnerships with leading manufacturers, DKT procures products at competitive prices, which ultimately translates into cost-savings for providers and clients.
DKT manages the full logistics process: importing, clearing, warehousing, and distributing health products. By leveraging private-sector infrastructure, we ensure our products are available when and where clients need them, including clinics, pharmacies, and drug shops. Our supply chain initiatives also extend beyond the useful life of a product to areas like medical waste disposal, supporting safety, regulatory compliance, and environmental sustainability.
Scale
DKT distributes sexual and reproductive health (SRH) products in over 100 countries and six continents. DKT invests over $130 million in product procurement annually, making us one of the largest providers of SRH in the world.
Quality
DKT is committed to procuring high-quality products that consumers can trust. DKT procures products from trusted manufacturers, and products undergo rigorous quality testing by third-party laboratories.
Resilience
DKT promotes resilient supply chains through proactive demand forecasting, diversifying partnerships with manufacturers, and building wide-reaching in-country distribution networks that get products to the last mile.
DKT Delivers Impact Along the Supply Chain
DKT works with strategic partners and staff to ensure products are available, accessible, and affordable to consumers around the world.
Three Pillars of Impact:
Upstream
Midstream
Downstream
Upstream:
Manufacturing, quality assurance, registration
DKT works with suppliers to manufacture, register, and market sexual and reproductive health products in 100+ countries. DKT works with trusted suppliers to assure quality during manufacturing, ensuring the facilities, ingredients, and processes used to make our products adhere to international best practices. Our large footprint allows DKT to negotiate stronger terms with manufacturers, often resulting in lower prices that translate to increased affordability by the time products reach consumers.
Midstream:
Importation, warehousing, distribution, sales
DKT ensures high-quality products are available where and when consumers want them by distributing them to hundreds of thousands outlets. DKT imports products, clears them through customs, and warehouses them. Sales teams move products further along the supply chain, often to regional warehouses where they can easily be transported to smaller depots or directly to providers and retailers. DKT adheres to good storage and distribution practices to preserve integrity and quality of products along their journey.
Downstream:
Last mile delivery, service provision
DKT goes the extra mile to ensure our products are available in remote villages and accessible to underserved communities. DKT sales representatives deliver products via car, motorbike, and even boat to reach less accessible parts of the country under some of the most challenging circumstances. In some countries, DKT operates brick and mortar or mobile clinics that provide safe spaces for clients to access high-quality care without stigma or fear.
DKT WomanCare Supports Global Partners
DKT WomanCare delivers high-quality, affordable sexual and reproductive health products to governments, non-governmental organizations, institutional partners, commercial customers, and DKT programs. This includes providing supplies to local governments and partners in markets not currently served by DKT International social marketing programs. DKT expands access to new and existing reproductive health technologies by leveraging WomanCare’s historical distribution channels, ensuring supply chain readiness, and developing innovative marketing and education efforts around the world.
Ipas MVA
DKT WomanCare is the legal manufacturer of Ipas manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) technology. DKT WomanCare oversees its manufacturing, quality assurance, registration, sales, distribution, and marketing worldwide.
Strategic Partnerships
DKT partners with:
- Shanghai Dahua Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. to register, market, and sell the Levoplant contraceptive implant.
- Medicines360 to expand access to the hormonal IUD Avibela.
- Incepta Pharmaceuticals to register, supply, and promote a contraceptive injectable.
A Growing Portfolio
DKT WomanCare’s portfolio also includes emergency contraception, oral contraception, IUDs, condoms, misoprostol, and medical abortion combination pack. DKT WomanCare provides extensive training and medical detailing to providers on its range of products.
Our Value Add
Supporting Governments
Although DKT primarily works in the private sector, we are playing an increasingly large role in supporting governments with product provision via large tenders and donations. DKT’s partnership with governments in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan have helped close critical supply gaps.
Commitment to Quality Assurance
Ensuring the quality of our products is a core responsibility and priority for DKT. DKT’s multifaceted quality assurance approach includes taking steps to establish, ensure, and monitor the efficacy and safety of our products. Consumer trust is critical to our reputation, and we promote this through the following:
- Strong relationships with trusted suppliers: DKT has long-standing relationships with well-regarded manufacturers through our more than 30 years in operation. We procure products that are quality-assured by experts like the World Health Organization and other stringent regulatory authorities.
- Quality control testing: While testing requirements vary from product to product, in general, the products DKT procures undergo testing at the point of manufacturing or are randomly sampled for testing in-country by third-party, independent laboratories.
- Storage and distribution: DKT adheres to good storage and distribution practices to ensure product quality and efficacy along the supply chain. This includes storing products out of direct sunlight and within approved temperature ranges.
Leveraging Economies of Scale
In certain parts of the world, DKT leverages linguistic, cultural, and economic commonalities to operate contraceptive social marketing programming in a more cost-effective manner. DKT’s regional programs—which have a hub office serving customers and clients in neighboring countries—benefit from economies of scale in procurement and other operational areas, such as marketing.
By pooling procurement activities across a region, DKT is able to negotiate better pricing and terms with manufacturers than we would be able to obtain if procuring products for a singular, less populous country. This was first trialed by DKT in 2016 in Francophone West Africa, where communities faced significant barriers to reproductive healthcare, but organizations had not been able or incentivized to invest resources in less populous countries. Today, DKT procures a range of products for distribution across the region, and has adopted the approach elsewhere.
