Funding &Procurement Supply Management &Treatment Bill Brieger | 21 May 2012 01:29 am
Stock-outs: how can we achieve malaria treatment goals?
Of twenty-two malaria endemic countries in Africa that receive support from both USAID/PMI and the Global Fund, eleven reported gaps in malaria medicine funding in the 2011 Road Maps countries prepare for Roll Back Malaria. Likewise, 16 of these countries reported gaps in RDT financing and supplies.
These stock and procurement problems arise from many causes including ability to forecast need, poor donor coordination and leadership, and lack of adherence to new guidelines that require diagnostic verification of malaria before treatment among others. We are well past the 2010 RBM target date to achieve 80% treatment coverage, but the most recent DHS and MIS results from the 22 countries for appropriate treatment of children below five years of age show that the country with the highest achievement of ACT coverage in this age group was Malawi with only 36.2%. The median among these 22 countries was 16.5%.
Therefore, it was not surprising that The Citizen newspaper reported from Dar es Salaam that, “Thousands of Tanzanians have continued to die from malaria annually due to lack of medicines despite massive investment by the government and donors towards improved supply of relevant drugs in health facilities.” Apparently programs like SMS for Life and AMFm have not had their desired effects.
The Citizen lamented that, “Phone calls to the CEO of Medical Stores Department (MSD), which is charged with responsibility of distributing drugs in the country, went unanswered.” Other malaria implementation partners gave their own views that the problem was due to lack of professionalism among health officials and a lack of commitment to implementing the malaria program.
If we cannot even achieve malaria treatment targets by 2010, what hope do we have of reducing mortality by 2015 – let alone head toward elimination? Technical assistance may be needed, but cannot succeed if there is a lack of will on the part of program implementation partners from the endemic countries.