ABSTRACT
Background:Assessment of availability of essential medicines is a critical component of universal health coverage and important factor to address patients’ satisfaction and increase their health seeking behavior. Proper inventory management of essential drugs in the health facilities is critical in ensuring availability of essential drugs. The objectives of the study were to assess availability of essential medicines and inventory control practice in university of Gondar comprehensive specialized hospital.Methods:The study was conducted using institution based cross sectional study design from March 10 to April 10, 2019. The data was collected by data abstraction formats and structured observation checklist and data was analyzed by Microsoftoffice excel for the assessment of the essential medicine’s availability and inventory control practices in Gondar university comprehensive specialized hospital.Results:The overall average availability of essential medicines during survey period in Gondar university hospital was 79.17%. The average stock out in the last six months period was 41.67%. The mean duration of stock out of essential medicines of the hospital in the last six months period was 31.7 days and average frequency of stock out was 0.7. The discrepancy between physical count and stock record count of essential medicines ranged from 0% to about 95%.Conclusions:The average availability of essential medicines during data collection period was fairly high. However, the facility was stock out for significant percent of essential medicines over the last six monthsperiod and stock out to lesser extent of percent at the time of survey period
ABSTRACT
Background:Always, better control(ABC)-vital, essential and non-essential (VEN) matrix analysis has a key role in assisting decisions making in medicine selection, purchasing and inventory management and hence help in reducing cost, identifying medicine use problems and improve efficiency in the pharmaceutical supply system. Studies on analysis of pharmaceuticals expenditures throughout the country were very limited, in Jimma zone no studies found yet. The objective of the study was, therefore, to analyze pharmaceuticals based on cost and criticality aspects and identify those which require stringent managerial control at selected public health facilities of Jimma zone Southwest Ethiopia. Methods:Health facility-based, cross-sectional, study design using a quantitative method in which ABC, VEN and ABC-VEN matrix analysis techniques were utilized to analyse pharmaceutical inventory management system at selected public health facilities of Jimma zone. Results:The ABC analysis shows that class A items accounted for 53(15.3%), whereas class B and C items accounted for 72(20.8%) and 221(63.8%) number of items at selected public health facilities of Jimma zone. VEN analysis showed that 132 items (59.7%) were categorized as vital and consumes 61.4% ($248,372) of the annual pharmaceuticals expenditures (APE). Whereas, 55 items (24.8%) and 34 items (15.3%) were categorized under essential and less/non-essential with a total APE of 31.1% ($126,020) and 7.4%($30,008)respectively. From ABC-VEN matrix analysis, the majority of items were category I pharmaceuticals.Conclusions:Majority of items at a selected public health facility were category I and most of the category I pharmaceuticals, in turn, were Class A and V items which require great attention for their control and availability