SIAPS

The success of the Namibian government's “treatment for all” approach to control and stop the country's HIV epidemic is dependent on an uninterrupted supply of antiretrovirals (ARVs) for people living with HIV. The public health system in Namibia, however, was constrained by an inefficient paper-based pharmaceutical information system resulting in unreliable and inaccessible data, contributing to persistent stock-outs of ARVs and other essential pharmaceuticals. This article describes the incremental implementation of an integrated pharmaceutical management information system to provide timely and reliable commodity and patient data for decision making in Namibia's national antiretroviral therapy (ART) program and the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS). Namibia's pharmaceutical management information system demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of integrating related tools while maintaining their specialized functionality to address country-specific information and inventory management needs.

In 2013, the Guinean health authority had to reorganise and run a national response against malaria as a priority. The review of the National Strategic Plan to fight malaria in Guinea was carried out and one of its critical components was the prevention and rapid management of fever (RMF) attributable to malaria in children. The study reports on the demographic and health determinants of this rapid management in children under 5. The participants were 4786 children from 2874 representative households. RMF was defined in terms of recourse to primary care. The recourse was defined by child's reference for the treatment of fever which led or not to treatment of malaria. We found that 1491 children (31.2%) had a bout of fever within the 2 weeks that preceded the survey. The prevalence of malaria was 45.4% among those children who have a bout of fever. The recourse to traditional healers was estimated at 9.6% and the use of health facilities was estimated at 71.5%. Overall, 74.9% of children with fever received treatment within the recommended timeliness (24 h), with regional disparity in this rapid response. The high proportion of recourse to traditional healers is still a matter of concern. New control and prevention strategies should be extended to traditional healers for their training and involvement in directing febrile children to health facilities.

Despite Namibia's robust medicine use systems and policies, antibiotic use indicators remain suboptimal. Recent medicine use surveys rank cotrimoxazole, amoxicillin and azithromycin (CAA) among the most used medicines. However, there is rising resistance to CAA (55.9%-96.7%). A quantitative text analysis found that policy and guidelines for antibiotic use in Namibia are not comprehensive and are skewed towards PHCs. Existing policies promote the wide use of CAA antibiotics, which may inadvertently result in their inappropriate use, enhancing resistance rates. This calls for the development of more comprehensive antibiotic guidelines and essential medicine lists in tandem with local antimicrobial resistance patterns. 

Private-sector retail drug outlets are often the first point of contact for common health ailments, including tuberculosis (TB). The objective of this systematic review was to better understand the extent to which the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation on engaging retail drug outlets has been translated into programmatic policy, strategy, and intervention in low- and middle-income countries. The study found that of national strategic plans for TB control from 14 countries with varying TB burdens and a strong private sector, only 2 had explicit statements on the need to engage their national pharmacy professional association. The success rate of referrals from retail drug outlets who visited an approved health facility for TB screening ranged from 48% in Vietnam to 86% in Myanmar. Coverage of retail drug outlets ranged from less than 5 to 9% of the universe of retail drug outlets. For WHO’s End TB Strategy to be successful, scaling up retail drug outlets to increase national coverage, at least in countries with a thriving private sector, will be instrumental in accelerating the early detection and referral of the 3 million missing TB cases. The proposed public-private mix pharmacy model is applicable not only for TB control but also to tackle the antimicrobial resistance crisis in these countries.

We examined how different training modalities have been employed and adapted in 12 countries to meet country-specific needs by a global pharmaceutical systems strengthening program in collaboration with a country’s Ministry of Health and local stakeholders. Case-based learning, practice and feedback, and repetitive interventions such as post-training action plan, supportive supervision and mentoring approaches are effective, evidence-based training techniques. In Ethiopia and Bangladesh, over 94% of respondents indicated that they have improved or developed skills or competencies as a result of the program’s training activities. Supportive supervision structures and mentorship have been institutionalized with appropriate management structures. National authorities have been sensitized to secure funding from domestic resources or from Global Fund grants for post-training follow-up initiatives. The Pharmaceutical Leadership Development Program is an effective, case-based training modality that motivates staff to develop quality-improvement interventions and solve specific challenges. Peer-to-peer learning mechanisms rather than traditional didactic methods was a preferred intervention among high level government officials both within country and between countries.

Ukraine has successfully implemented e-TB Manager nationwide as its mandatory national tuberculosis registry after first introducing it in 2009. Our objective was to perform an end-of-programme evaluation after formal handover of the registry administration to Ukraine's Centre for Disease Control in 2015. Of the 5.9 million transactions over a 4-year period, nine out of 24 oblasts (regions) and Kiev City accounted for 62.5% of all transactions, and corresponded to 59% of Ukraine's tuberculosis burden. There were 437 unique active users in 486 rayons (districts) of Ukraine, demonstrating extensive reach.

Users of e-TB Manager, a web-based eHealth system institutionalized in 10 resource-constrained countries that account for one-third of the world’s tuberculosis (TB) burden, reported that e-TB Manager helped to improve patient care and workplace productivity, and they found it reliable for case management. The users--especially those with more experience in TB programs and those who had used the system for more than two years--were generally satisfied with the system. Responses came from Armenia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Namibia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ukraine, and Vietnam. The study concluded that younger users and those with less experience in TB programs need more training, and institutional capacity for managing e-TB Manager takes at least five years. The capacity  to manage e-TB Manager has been built in Brazil and Ukraine.

Abstract Introduction: Active surveillance pharmacovigilance is a systematic approach to medicine safety assessment and health systems strengthening, but has not been widely implemented in low- and middle-income countries.

Abstract Purpose: Active surveillance pharmacovigilance systems better estimate the burden of adverse events (AEs) and can generate useful information on risk factors of AEs for more effective medicine use, especially in conjunction with introduction of new medicines and/or changes in treatment guidelines.

In 2014, the budget for high cost drugs in the Dominican Republic was USD 107 million, accounting for 51% of the Ministry of Health (MoH) budget for medicines. Resources allocated for the 2015 budget were USD 49 million, leaving a shortfall of USD 62 million. The MoH requested technical assistance from the USAID-funded SIAPS project to conduct an evidence based analysis of the 98 products included in the list.