Holy Family Hospital Nyapea is located in the depth of the new Zombo district and has been in existence for over 31 years. This health facility is historically a private not for profit health facility serving the community under the Catholic church. Being nonprofit poses major challenges in running the facility such as, financial inadequacy, inadequate infrastructure, human resources skills gap, drug supplies management and others.

Of the above challenges, improper drug supplies management was stifling the facility with drug shortages thus the hospital administrative team decided to sit and review the issues and found that, drug handling personnel lacked proper that led to major stock outs of essential drugs, and thus when the Support to the Development of Human Resources project was carrying out a needs assessment, the hospital administration quickly grabbed the opportunity and prioritised a Supply Chain Management training to assist them close the gap.

The training was attended by 17 staff; managers, mid managers and drug handlers in all departments. “After the training we drew an action plan to address our challenge, clearly indicating the action point, performance indicator, and timeline for implementation”, affirms Dr Jammy Omara, a medical officer at the facility and training participant. “I must say the training registered a success as you shall see from our performance indicators” he adds.

The facility has been able to adopt a Vital Essential Necessary (VEN) system with a list of essential drugs classified along the system. This system greatly assists in determining what drugs are purchased to avoid waste of resources.

Unlike in the past when drug orders were uncalculated, now orders are only made for essential drugs. The facility is now able to calculate daily and monthly consumption from the store in a timely manner.

Storage of drug has also greatly improved. All drugs are now labelled in the store and organised. They have also acquired shelves, some lockable to better store and protect drugs.

They have formed a therapeutic committee that analyses drug usage, cost analysis reports, benefits analysis for drug accountability purposes

Dr Mark Bramali, also a medical officer and participant in this training confirms that they have been able to reduce drug stock outs to 11% from 36%. He asserts that even the 11% would be much less if it weren’t for situations beyond their control such us delayed delivery schedules of the suppliers.

To further address the issue of drug stock outs, they now order for essential drugs that are running our early enough, as early as 2 weeks to stock out in projection of the ones in the store. Thus they have been able to save about 14 million per year on drugs wasted, which to a facility that operates on a very small budget is substantial money.

Kafeero Ibrahim, a registered nurse and participant of the Supply Chain training confirms that there has been a great improvement in drugs storage, drug stock outs have reduced significantly, there is now prioritisation of drugs procured, and dispensing log books are now in place and regular updates of drug stock cards to estimate drug usage.

In conclusion, Dr Jammy mentions he on behalf of Holy Family hospital Nyapea is very grateful to Enabel for helping them close this gap that was stifling their facility.” We are glad Enabel did not force a training on us that may have perhaps been irrelevant to our needs. They came and assessed our needs and gave us an opportunity to identify and prioritise our own needs that we urgently needed training in. The trainer brought us did not disappoint and Holy Family Nyapea hospital is now on track as far as stocking essential drugs is concerned.’’