ASSESSMENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF MEDICAL LABORATORY SERVICES IN ETHIOPIA, THE CASE OF ART PROGRAM

Abstract

There are people living with HIV in all parts of the world, from all walks of life and cultures, all ages and all genders where some are more affected than others, and some have better access to services than others. Acquiring HIV is no longer means certain death as it has been observed that a person on HIV treatment in a high-income setting now has nearly the same life expectancy as a person who does not have the virus. More than 78 million people have been infected with HIV and 39 million have died since the start of the AIDS epidemic at a global level and HIV/AIDS remained uncontrolled and continued to be a major public health problem at a global and national level. Laboratory commodities are used in the provision of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment services while efficient and effective procurement of laboratory items critically impacts the quality of all laboratory services albeit laboratory items are numerous and creates serious challenges to procurement agencies. Policies help set standards for laboratory practice, including the tests and techniques that will be used at each level in the system, which ultimately dictate the commodities that are required to support laboratory services where the unique characteristics of laboratory commodities impact the way in which the supply chain should be designed and managed to ensure the availability of these commodities. Testing results are only of value to those making clinical decisions if the test results reported are timely and correct The organization of laboratories in a country will be determined by local policies, administrative structure of the health system, geography, and population consideration where by the laboratory network is often or may be organized by administrative levels like other health services. Assessment of the national SCMS of medical laboratory services for the ART program examines how well the system is organized and structured against the consensus of national framework indicators and how well the laboratory SCMS for ART monitoring is carried out against known ART SCMS indicators. Checklists & interview were used to collect secondary and primary information respectively and descriptively analyzed for conformances. The assessment showed the absence of most of the national laboratory program working frameworks and absence of important monitoring tools & practice to monitor the SCMS. Only limited laboratory tests are found to be used for ART patients monitoring while most of supplies for many testing services are found to be irregular and stock outs. The coverage of ART laboratory facility is also found to be less than 9% compared to number of health centers and hospitals across the country. Strong recommendations are drown to FMoH and other agencies to fulfill all the working frameworks and SCMS monitoring mechanisms to strengthen the laboratory program in general and the ART SCMS in particular.