Abstract:
Background: Modern health care is unthinkable without the availability of necessary medicines.
Availability of essential drugs is the construct of the components of the pharmaceutical supply
management (selection, quantification, procurement and distribution), and a failure in one part of
the system leads to the failure of the whole pharmaceutical management process. To minimize
this, investigating the real pharmaceutical management practices in the health sector is important.
Objective: The aim of this study is to assess pharmaceutical supply management practice in
public health facilities of southwest Shoa, Oromia Regioanal State, Ethiopia
Methods: Facility based cross-sectional study was conducted among selected twenty six health
centers, one public hospital and five Woreda and one Town Administration health offices and
Zonal Health Department of the of Southwest Shoa, Oromia Regional state, Ethiopia from March
13 to April 9, 2017. Data collection was done by using self administered Questionnaire,
document review and in depth interview. Ethical clearance was obtained from Jimma University
Institutional Review Board. The data was checked for completeness and consistency, cleared,
coded, and Quantitative data was entered in to EPI DATA 3.1 and exported in to SPSS 20 and
was descriptively analyzed. Qualitative data was thematically analyzed.
Results: Three fifth of the surveyed facilities developed their Essential Medicine List. In around
85% of the health facilities pattern of prevalent disease is criteria for medicine selection. The
mean score of selected pharmaceutical procurement practices, selected good storage practices
and inventory management practices of the facilities were around 61%, 55% and 62%
respectively when compared to the standard. Most the prescribers do not always prescribe by
generic name and consider drug interaction and patient related problems while prescribing.
Greater than one fourth dispensers were not pharmacy professional and only around half them
were responded that they do have access to drug information. All dispensers do not fully provide
necessary information and didn’t consider special groups while dispensing.
Conclusion and Recommendation: Generally this study identified selected pharmaceutical
selection, procurement, distribution and use practices are not satisfactory when compared to
national and internationals minimum standards. Barriers hindering these states of affairs should
be acted up on by the facilities, WoHO, ZHD, RHB, Federal MOH and other stakeholders.
