Landscape Assessment of Health Technology Introduction in South Africa’s Public Health Sector - medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and devices

This report examines how new medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and medical devices are introduced into South Africa’s public health system. It draws on two linked components: a multi-case health policy analysis across the four technology categories, and four case studies: the retrospective introductions of the BPaL-L regimen for drug-resistant TB and GeneXpert MTB/RIF, and the prospective cases of adult TB vaccine preparedness and lenacapavir for HIV prevention.

Findings from the multi-case analysis are synthesised through the ALIGN framework and tested against a stakeholder analysis.

South Africa has a formalised, rule-based system for introducing health technologies and makes good use of evidence. Adoption depends on alignment across regulation,
financing, procurement, service readiness and monitoring not on evidence alone.