# A live stock-out map for essential chemotherapy drugs

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-acc-chemo-stockout-early-warning/  
OnCo record `idea-acc-chemo-stockout-early-warning` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Hospitals in poorer countries often run out of basic, cheap chemotherapy for weeks. A shared live map of stock levels would let buyers and donors act before a child's treatment is interrupted.

## Summary

Stock-outs of cisplatin, methotrexate, asparaginase, vincristine, and other generic cytotoxics are common in public hospitals across Africa and parts of Asia, and are a leading cause of treatment abandonment and cure-rate loss in curable cancers. Consumption data exists in hospital pharmacies but is not shared. A lightweight reporting system (SMS or app) feeding a regional dashboard, with a buffer-stock fund and a pre-negotiated emergency supplier, would turn reactive shortages into managed ones.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Districts reporting into a stock-out early-warning system with an emergency buffer will reduce chemotherapy stock-out days per year by at least 60% and reduce documented treatment interruptions.
- Rationale: Malaria and HIV programmes cut stock-outs sharply with the same tools (logistics management information systems and buffer stocks). Oncology has never had a programme-level supply chain.
- Proposed test: Twelve-month pilot in one country with monthly stock-out days, interruption episodes in paediatric ALL and Hodgkin protocols, and cost per averted interruption as endpoints.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: data

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Most of the world has almost no cancer care): WHO fact sheet, Cancer: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer

## Connected records

- cancers: [Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia](https://onco.cc/cancers/all-leukemia/), [Hodgkin lymphoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/hodgkin-lymphoma/)
- fronts: [Chemotherapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/chemotherapy/)
- technologies: [Cytotoxic chemotherapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/cytotoxic-chemotherapy/)
- bottlenecks: [Data silos](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-data-silos/), [Most of the world has almost no cancer care](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-global-access/)
- ideas: [Trials of low-cost opioid alternatives where morphine supply is unreliable](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-acc-methadone-and-alternatives-where-morphine-fails/)

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