Project Title
A Study of budgetary provisions, procurement and supply system concerning essential medicines in selected districts of Maharashtra (IBP)
Project Period
August 2009 – March 2012
Research Component
Availability of essential medicines in public health facilities is one of the serious concerns regarding the quality of health care services. This is also one of the major reasons for lower utilisation of the public health system. Some amount of evidence is already available to substantiate this fact including preliminary findings of the household survey conducted by SATHI. For example in the 60th round of National Sample Survey (2004), information was sought regarding the medical expenditure for treatment under different heads of treatment during stay at hospitals as an inpatient. Analysis of this data reveals that the range of proportion of total expenditure on medicines was from 57 to 66. The proportion of expenditure on medicines to total expenditure is higher in the public health facilities as compared to private health facilities. This clearly indicates that though the public health facilities are supposed to provide the health care services at minimal costs, due to non availability of essential medicines in these facilities, the actual costs borne by the patients are very high.
Project objectives To improve the availability of essential medicines in PHCs
Short term objectives
- To understand the procurement and distribution process in the state of Maharashtra
- To develop tools for monitoring the procurement and distribution system
Key research areas in this project are
- To study budgetary allocations- The budgetary allocations for essential medicines in the districts/ PHCs under study.
- Study of procurement of essential medicines in the state of Maharashtra-The procurement and distribution system of selected essential medicines in the state of Maharashtra with a view of understanding key gaps, bottlenecks and reasons for delay
- Study of availability of essential medicines in the selected districts -Actual availability of various essential medicines at select PHCs
Activities
- To find out the Per capita allocations and expenditures for essential medicines in the districts/ PHCs under study, the following documents would be studied – At the state level- Annual Financial statement of Procurement Cell of Department of Health, Budget and expenditure statement of procurement cell At the district level- ZP budget and expenditure on medicines,
- Expenditure tracking for the select medicines purchased at the state level, at the district level as well as PHC level.
- To document the process of procurement for select medicines in the state of Maharashtra
- To study the distribution system for the 9 selected medicines
- To understand the systems that is put in place to ensure quality of medicines procured.
- To check availability of selected essential medicines in the two selected PHC`s
To know more about international budget partnership (IBP) and their partnership initiative click on http//www.internationalbudget.org
