Two-day AccessRH Regional training for Central Asian countries, organized by the UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund (Regional and Sub-Regional Office in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Procurement Service Branch), was held at the President hotel in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

At the training, the representatives from the Government and UNFPA from five Central Asian countries increased their awareness and knowledge on usage of a new web portal AccessRH to cover country needs on reproductive health commodities.

AccessRH is a UNFPA-managed reproductive health procurement and information service that aims to improve access to quality, affordable sexual and reproductive health commodities (RHCs) and reduce delivery times for low- and middle-income country government and non-governmental organization (NGO) clients. AccessRH also offers accurate, upto-date information on contraceptive orders and shipments for more than 140 countries through a website that is unique in the field.

Government partners and UNFPA Reproductive Health specialists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan participated at the training where they were introduced to a new approach to reproductive health commodities procurement. Additionally, the participants presented on existing practices of RHCS procurement in their countries and discussed the ways to synchronize the proposed program AccessRH with the state regulations and RH commodities procurement procedures.

“AccessRH will help Governments to use their limited State budget in order to implement their national RH programmes and plans particularly for the increasing of access to Reproductive Health commodities (RHCs) and services for marginalized and otherwise underserved populations” said Karl Kulessa, UNFPA Representative in Uzbekistan and Country Director for Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, “AccessRH is online service to get the Right Goods, in the Right Quantities, in the Right Condition, to th