Experience of Managers in the Supply Chain for Medication and Other Pharmaceutical Products

The accessibility of pharmaceutical products remains an essential element in population care and an immeasurable pillar in public health. The objective of this research article is to understand the experience of managers on the supply chain for medication and other pharmaceutical products in all structures of the Wangata Health Zone. The inductive approach with the phenomenological method was used to analyze the stockout phenomenon in the empirical field, which is the Wangata health zone. Interviews were carried out over a period of one month from 16 August 2024 to 16 September 2024 in the Wangata General Referral Hospital as well as 7 health centers in the Wangata Health Zone. The interviewed people were managers responsible for supplies, purchasing managers, custodians, pharmacy assistants, and all administrators in charge of various structures in this zone. 19 semi-directed interviews were conducted after noting the saturation of information among respondents. The obtained results show in a practical way the dependence on partners (donors) for the supply of medical products, late deliveries, and drugs that are close to expiry. Drugs provided by partners do not meet the real needs of users. Stock shortages, price increases in pharmaceutical depots, insufficient funding, a permanent lack of partners, a total absence of organization of continuing training sessions, and premises, where pharmacies are installed in the majority of cases, are inappropriate and do not meet the standards of a hospital pharmacy. The conclusion drawn from this research emphasizes that regulation of the pharmaceutical supply chain, a good logistics management information system (LMIS), availability of funding, and distributed leadership skills in the pharmaceutical supply chain will allow health structures to take care of users appropriately. These strategies will also enable health structures, through their stock managers, to ensure the availability of medicines and other medicinal inputs and to guarantee a financial balance, allowing them to self-generate medical supplies in order to be partially or totally independent in terms of acquiring medicines.