Inventory management performance of key essential medicines in health facilities of East Shewa Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia
Abstract
Purpose: Appropriate management of medicines at the different stages of supply chain is important. Failure to do so will result in stock-out, wastage of medicines and financial loss which in turn affects the health care services. The aim of this study was to assess the inventory management performance of key essential medicines.
Material and Methods: Health facility based descriptive cross- sectional study using both quantitative and qualitative method was employed on 20 public health facilities. Data was gathered using checklists, structured and sem-structured questionnaires from March 29 to April 29, 2016.
Result: The inventory management performance of key essential medicines in-terms of measuring indicators revealed that out of 400 bin-cards selected 162(40.50%) of them were not updated. Only 28.50% of bin-cards were accurately filled. The mean stock out rate of key essential medicines was around 27.25% with average stock out duration of 35.31 days. On average around 10.43% of medicines were wasted resulting in loss of 174,366.98 Ethiopian birr (ETB) of which the value of medroxy progestrone accounted around 65.74% of the loss. Concerning storage condition only 5(25%) of the health facility have full filled good storage condition criteria. Budget constraints, human resource inadequacy, & over supply of near expiry date medicines were identified as major in inventory management challenges.
Conclusion: The inventory management practice of the study facilities was found to be weak which was confirmed by poor bin-card updating practice, storage condition below the standard and poor stock record accuracy. There were also high stock out rates, and medicines wastage with loss of money.
Keywords
Inventory management , performance , key essential medicines , health facilities , East Shewa Zone
References
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