At the periphery level, the best way to assess the availability of drugs is by doing a survey in a few health facilities to measure the actual stock of essential drugs and by performing interviews of the medical staff in these health facilities on the actual state of supply of essential drugs.A. SURVEYObjective: Analyse a representative sample of health facilities which serve under the APED programme in order to assess the availability of essential drugs.Therefore the best way to choose the number of health facilities to be surveyed during the evaluation would probably be the following:1. select the administrative units covered by the evaluation,2. stratify the administrative units according to the time the units have been part of the programme,3. divide each strata into smaller geographical units (clusters),4. decide how many clusters can be covered time wise during the mission,5. divide the number of clusters by the number of stratas,6. if the number of clusters within each strata is roughly the same, select randomly as many clusters from each strata as the result given in point 5. If the numbers are not the same, select number of clusters in proportion to strata size,7. if it will not be possible time wise to visit all health facilities within each cluster, stratify the material into, e.g. hospitals, health centres, dispensaries, etc., and continue as described in points 4, 5 and 6.
B. IN EACH HEALTH FACILITY (HF):
1. Evaluate the reliability of records (patient registers, stock replenishment costs, bin cards, etc.).
2. Note the drugs selected for the level of health care concerned that are actually in stock at the moment of inspection? the quantities of each? the date of the next replenishment? the date of the last replenishment?
3. Calculate, based on the number of treatment episodes over the last 3 months, for how long the stock of each essential drug is going to last.
4. Is there in stock drugs which are not selected for this level of health?
Essential Drugs in stock in each facility
Type of drug
Amount received during 3 months
Amount distributed during 3 months
Present stock
How long will this stock last
Chloroquine
ORS
Penicillin
etc.
This table gives answers to two questions:
- Are the essential drugs selected for the level of health concerned available?
- Are the stocks going to last till the next distribution
C. INTERVIEW WITH PRESCRIBING STAFF/STAFF IN CHARGE OF HF
1. Are all essential drugs available now?
2. Is the drug supply improving, the same or getting worse?
3. How is the level of drug supply in general?
4. Are drugs received on a regular basis?
5. How frequently?
6. Which drugs are always supplied in short?
7. Which drugs are always supplied in abundance?
8. Are there any expired drugs in stock?
9. For how many weeks (or months) during the past year, have you been out of stock of critical drugs (chloroquine, penicilline, ORS...)?
10. Do you think that new drugs must be added to the list?
In order to answer questions 6, 7, 8 and 9, the following table should be used:
Type of drug
Actual stock
Out of Stock since 1-2 mths (wks)
Out of stock since 3-5 mths (wks)
Out of stock more than 5 mths (Wks)
Comments including no information
Chloroquine
ORS
Penicillin
etc.
A table can be drawn, from the information collected in each type of HF of the sample; this table will facilitate the assessment of drug availability in general:
Type of HF:
No. of HFs with stock
No. of HFs out of stock since 1-2 mths (wks)
No. of HFs out of stock since 3-5 mths (wks)
No. of HFs out of stock more than 5 mths (wks)
No info.
Type of drug
Chloroquine
ORS
Penicillin
etc.
D. EVALUATE SHORTAGE
If there is a shortage of essential drugs at the HF level, try to evaluate whether it is due to:
- logistics problems (supply, distribution) (see 4.2)
- quantification of drugs
- irrational prescribing or inaccurate diagnosis (see 5.3).
Evaluate the weight of each component.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..