Quality of Pharmaceutical Services in Uganda:

Abstract

The study was on the quality of pharmaceutical services in Uganda, a case study of Public and Private not for Profit (PNFP) health facilities in Kampala.

The statement of the problem originated from the fact that in most health facilities drugs were either out of stock, expired or not of good quality as it does not meet its desired effect of treating the disease its suppose to according to the Uganda Pharmaceutical Sector Baseline survey 2002. Also according to World Health Organisation report 2010, more than 50% of all medicines are prescribed, dispensed or sold inappropriately, and half of all patients fail to take medicines correctly.

The objectives of the study were to identify human resource factors, establish the Process factors and assess the facility factors influencing the quality of pharmaceutical services.

The study design was cross-sectional and descriptive in nature, where by quantitative data was collected. The respondents were pharmacy staff sampled from the different hospitals in four out of five divisions of Kampala.

The results from this study revealed that there was inadequate staffing in all the pharmacy outlets that were sampled. This research also revealed that a big proportion of the respondents strongly disagree (42.1%) and disagree (57.1%) that all medicines and sundries ordered were usually supplied by NMS or any other supplier.

The conclusion is that there was inadequate staffing in all pharmacies sampled, the average time spent on dispensing was less than WHO recommended more than 60 seconds, And that a large proportion of stock cards were not regularly up to date.