Inventory management performance of anti tuberculosis commodities in public health facilities in dire dawa city administration, east Ethiopia

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.