Abstract:
Background: Health supply chain is interconnected network that ensures the availability of
health commodities to the people who need them. Inventory management involves ordering,
receiving, storing, issuing, and reordering of the limited of items. The inventory management
system aims to determine when and how much stock to issue or order.
Objective: To assess tracer pharmaceutical inventory management performance and its
determinant in selected public health facilities of southwest Shewa zone, Oromia regional state
of Ethiopia.
Methods: A facility-based descriptive cross-sectional study accompanied by a qualitative method
was conducted, from February 1-30, 2021. From fifty eight public health facilities, eighteen
facilities was selected using lottery method and included in the study. All tracer drugs listed by
ministry of health were included and for each of them, one bin card from each facility and a total
of 360 bin cards were selected. Statistical Package for Social Science version 23 and Microsoft
Excel used for the analysis of the quantitative data. For the qualitative data, one central store
managers of each facility were interviewed and summarized and analyzed thematically. A check
list was used to assess the adherence to desirable storages conditions.
Result: Eighteen public health facilities were included in the study. None of the visited health
facilities had stock cards. Other Logistics management information systems tools were available
in all visited health facilities. About 267(74.16%) of the pharmaceuticals had bin cards, and 179
(67.04%) of the bin cards were updated. But, 88 (32.96%) of the bin cards were not updated. The
inventory record accuracy was 48.3%, and the stock out status was 28.6% with an average of
stock out rate of 20.5 days. Regarding desirable storage conditions, 11(61.11%) facilities adhere
to the desired storage conditions.
Conclusion and recommendation: Poor bin card updating practice, poor stock record
accuracy, poor adherence to desirable storage condition, and frequent stock out was seen.
Shortage of human power, poor infrastructure and budget constraint was a challenge. Therefore,
the southwest Shewa zonal health department should give attention to improve the performance
