Assessment of pharmaceutical supply management practices in public health facilities of south west shoa, oromia regional state, Ethiopia

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.