{"entity":{"id":"idea-acc-chemo-stockout-early-warning","kind":"idea","name":"A live stock-out map for essential chemotherapy drugs","aka":[],"tldr":"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.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Most of the world has almost no cancer care): WHO fact sheet, Cancer","url":"https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["all-leukemia","hodgkin-lymphoma"],"sections":["chemotherapy"],"technologies":["cytotoxic-chemotherapy"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-global-access","b-data-silos"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"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.","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","cost":"small","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-acc-chemo-stockout-early-warning/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"all-leukemia","kind":"cancer","name":"Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia","route":"/cancers/all-leukemia/"},{"id":"hodgkin-lymphoma","kind":"cancer","name":"Hodgkin lymphoma","route":"/cancers/hodgkin-lymphoma/"}],"section":[{"id":"chemotherapy","kind":"section","name":"Chemotherapy","route":"/fronts/chemotherapy/"}],"technology":[{"id":"cytotoxic-chemotherapy","kind":"technology","name":"Cytotoxic chemotherapy","route":"/technologies/cytotoxic-chemotherapy/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-data-silos","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Data silos","route":"/bottlenecks/b-data-silos/"},{"id":"b-global-access","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Most of the world has almost no cancer care","route":"/bottlenecks/b-global-access/"}],"idea":[{"id":"idea-acc-methadone-and-alternatives-where-morphine-fails","kind":"idea","name":"Trials of low-cost opioid alternatives where morphine supply is unreliable","route":"/ideas/idea-acc-methadone-and-alternatives-where-morphine-fails/"}]}}