Medicinal drug set-up important: Official

PHARMACEUTICAL services infrastructure is important as it creates an environment that maintain the product’s quality, safety, security, efficacy and enhances supply chain integrity, an official says.
Health facilities standards manager Ambrose Kwaramb said infrastructure design and planning needs to be dictated by how services were provided.
He spoke about the pharmaceutical infrastructure standards during the review of pharmaceutical service standards and medical supplies, strategic implementation plan on Thursday.
“The infrastructure will give you that environment to make sure that manufacturing, distribution, storage, dispensing and disposal are maintained, and having the right infrastructure is important,” Kwaramb said. He said although there were health facilities functioning, almost 80 percent of them in remote areas were not in good condition, which meant, there were gaps that needed to be addressed.
“Some of the challenges and gaps that needs to be address are the deteriorating conditions of the health facility infrastructure, none availability of functioning expired drugs disposal facility in medical stores currently,” he said.
Kwaramb said there was inadequate storage capacities in health service facilities, fully assembled medical storages warehouse capacities not yet developed and no national pharmaceutical infrastructure implementation plan.