Abstract:
Inventory management is the process to order, receive, store, issue and then reorder
commodities. Poor inventory management in health facilities leads to wastage, shortage of
medicines or overage resulting in expiration and decline in the quality of patient care. In
addition, it results in wrong decisions, inaccurate stock records and lack of systematic
performance monitoring. Different researches done in Ethiopia shows that, there was an
intermittent supply and shortage of anti-tuberculosis commodities plus poor utilization of
recording and reporting logistic formats. Unavailability of anti-tuberculosis commodities can
lead to interruption of service and patients’ treatment.
Objective: The objective of this study was to assess anti tuberculosis commodities inventory
management performance in public health facilities of Dire Dawa city administration.
Methods: Facility based cross sectional study design using both quantitative and qualitative
method was used. All (n=16) public health facilities found in Dire Dawa were assessed from
March 22 to April 22, 2018.The quantitative data were checked for completeness and then
entered into SPSS version 20 for analysis. Chi-square was used to test the presence of
association and p-value < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant association.
Results: From the assessed 111 bincards for first line drugs sixty percent of bin cards were
updated and 77.2% were accurate. Only 4(25%) of the health facilities tuberculosis clinic and
3(18.8%) of laboratory unit use bin card for stock control for drugs and supplies respectively.
Average accuracy rate for report and requisition form was 57.1%. None of the health
facilities had complete report and requisition form.All health facilities face stock out for at
least one anti tuberculosis commodity with different duration of time.Medicines which cost
84,275.04 Ethiopian birr were lost due to expiry.Concerning storage condition only 8(50%)
of health facilities have full filled good storage condition criteria.Work load, human resource
inadequacy and poor adherance of dispensing unit to there schedule were identified as major
inventory management challenges.
Conclusion: The inventory management performance of the study facilities was found to be
weak which was confirmed by poor bin-card updating practice, poor stock record accuracy
and poor storage condition below the standard.There were also high stock out rates and
medicines wastage with loss of money.
