Assessment Of Cold Chain Quality Management For Pharmaceuticals In Government Hospitals In Addis Ababa Experimentalquasi-experimental Approach

Background: Cold chain management for pharmaceuticals is an extension of Good Manufactur-ing Practice. The entire supply chain system is expected to keep this practice throughout the chain starting from the moment the pharmaceuticals/ vaccines and other medicinesreleased from the manufacturer until they reach to the beneficiaries. The safety of these medicines depends on the properly maintaining of the system.rnObjective: To examine the cold chain management practice of government hospitals in Addis AbabarnDesign: An Experimental/Quasi experimental research design was used to record the tempera-ture of six government hospitals cold chain system cross-sectionally for one week by using Log-Tag® reader model TRIX 8 and Questionnairewhich contains basic cold chain quality manage-ment principles.rnResult: The practice of cold chain management in the Hospitals was described by analyzing the temperature record of the device. Reading of one hospital temperature record was not possible to extract from the device. The five hospital data had shown that 4/5 (80%) of them experience cold chain break during the study period. The result of the Questionnaire also revealed that there were gaps in the management of vaccines described in terms of lack of SOP in receiving and dispatching,absence of advisor during cold chain break and lack of decision matrix that in-dicated which types of cold chain breaks can be managed at the hospital level or higher regula-tory body advice to accept or reject vaccines exposed to high/low temperature out off the stan-dard +2ºC to +8ºC.rnConclusion: There is a real gap in maintaining the standard cold chain temperature for vaccines and other cold chain medicines in the hospitals. Therefore there is need for using monitoring devices that can track temperature fluctuations and duration of exposure, developing cold chain guideline, development of experts in the area and cold chain breach decision matrix.

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