pharmaceutical services

This post was originally published on the SIAPS website on January 30, 2017. The Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services (SIAPS) program is funded by USAID and implemented by MSH. This project works to assure the availability of quality pharmaceutical products and effective pharmaceutical services.

Over the past two decades, Ethiopia has improved its delivery of primary health care services and begun to make great progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals, particularly with regard to maternal, newborn, and child health and the prevention and control of HIV and tuberculosis. Yet pharmaceutical services—a patient's last point of care and one of the country's single largest health care expenses—remain inadequate. While some medicines in stock expire, other needed medicines are frequently unavailable, and patients are dissatisfied with the poor quality of service they receive.

This blog post was originally published on the SIAPS website on December 27, 2016.

It's been called the pharmaceutical sector, a drug supply or management system or the medical products building block. By any name, the part of a health system that deals with ensuring access to essential medicines, vaccines and medical products and their correct use–we call it a pharmaceutical system at SIAPS–is critical. Yet despite much research in the field on improving its performance and considerable progress towards strengthening its components, there is no apparent consensus on what constitutes a pharmaceutical system in all of its complexity.

In addition, there's no clearly defined framework for measuring progress in pharmaceutical system strengthening (PSS). That means that countries and donors lack complete information for guiding their investments in PSS interventions, and the tools and agreed-on measures to evaluate them.

Strong health systems are necessary to help prevent and mitigate epidemics, including the oft-overlooked epidemic of antimicrobial resistance.

This is the third post in a new series on improving the health of the poorest and most vulnerable women, girls, families, and communities by prioritizing prevention and preparing health systems for epidemics (see also: Part 1 and Part 2). Join the conversation online with hashtag #HealthSystems.

In May 2015, the World Health Assembly discussed and endorsed a global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. The action plan sets five strategic objectives to promote better understanding of the threat of antimicrobial resistance, and to ensure the proper use and conservation of existing antimicrobials.