Factors contributing to medicines wastage in public health facilities of South West Shoa Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia: a qualitative study.

Background: Medicines wastage is one of the challenges of health supply chain management in developing countries including Ethiopia. However, there is lack of objective evidence on the detailed underlying causes of medicines wastage. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore factors contributing for medicines wastage in selected public health facilities of South West Shoa Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted in 10 public health facilities (1 General hospital and 9 health centers). An in-depth interview with flexible probing techniques was employed to collect the data from 20 key informants from May 2, 2016 to May 27, 2016. A semi structured interview guide was prepared to explore key informants' idea about current situation of contributing factors and efforts made to reduce medicines wastage in public health facilities. A thematic analysis was then used to analyze the data. Results: Almost all key informants felt that medicines wastage is increasing from time to time in their health facility due to supplier's issuing of medicines without health facilities' needs and request, failure to follow first expired first out principle in issuing medicines from stores to different dispensing units, lack of communication between supplier and health facilities, inadequate number of pharmacy personnel and weak monitoring system of supply chain in the health facilities. They also revealed budget constraint, stock out of medicines and congested store are of the major challenge that are compromising their service provision. Conclusion: Medicine wastage is an ever-increasing problem in public health facilities of South West Shoa Zone. The problem is exacerbated due to absence of mechanisms to minimize the wastage. Health facilities, therefore, should place a mechanism to exchange medicines from overstocked facilities to under stocked ones; has to improve store management capacity by employing competent professionals, equipping the store with necessary technology and introducing a monitoring and evaluating health supply chain performance system in the health facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]