In order to ensure that there is no shortage of drugs in State-run health centres and that procurement is directly proportionate to requirement, the Department of Health and Family Welfare has developed an online drugs supply and monitoring software.
Under the new protocol, which will go into effect in February, every government health facility will have to update its requirements online in the new Drug Inventory Management System.
Drugs are procured by the Karnataka State Drugs Logistics and Warehousing Society and then distributed to warehouses across the State. From the warehouse, consignments are transported to primary health centres, community health centres, and taluk and district hospitals. But the procurement system is obsolete as information on a health centre’s requirements is collected manually. The new online system aims to address this.
Explaining the benefits, Subodh Yadav, Commissioner, Department of Health and Family Welfare, said that drugs will be dispatched to the institutions every month. Around 3,000 State-run health facilities will have to input their requirements regularly.
The drugs requirement for every centre is chalked out by a committee consisting of a doctor, staff nurse, pharmacist and specialists (if the hospital offers multi-speciality services). The committee will have to calculate the drugs under three categories — fast moving, moderate moving, and slow moving.
“We will assess the local requirement and conduct a need assessment through our software, so that the usage of these drugs is optimised,” said Mr. Yadav.
The purpose of this exercise is to ensure that the right medicine reaches the institutes in the right quantity at the right place.
“For instance, snake bite and dog bite injections need to be available throughout the year. But for certain diseases such as malaria, we might need to procure more drugs during the monsoon,” he said.
Sources in the Health Department pointed out that this will help reduce expenditure as huge quantities of expired drugs are destroyed every year as they were not used.
For the 2016-17 year, the department is likely to incur a cost of around ₹270 crore for the procurement of drugs.
