Abstract:
Access to essential medicines in South Africa has been compromised by stockouts in health
facilities. This study analyses the occurrence of stockouts for a selection of essential medicines for
the period 2013-2015. An analytical cross-sectional design was undertaken using secondary data
retrieved from the Stop Stock Outs Project (SSP). Specifically, a descriptive analysis was
conducted on data from the 2013-2015 SSP’s case management database of routinely reported
stockouts. The Chi-square test of independence was conducted on data from the SSP’s 2015 annual
telephonic survey to investigate associations between the occurrence of stockouts, level of health
facilities and type of health professionals in the facilities. Two hundred and thirty-one health
facilities reported 609 stockouts. Antiretroviral medication had the most stockout reports (77.9%;
n=475/609), followed by anti-infectives (17.1%; n=104/609) and tuberculosis medication (4.9%;
n=30/609). The highest number of stockout reports were received from Gauteng province and the
majority (71.1%; n=150/211) of facilities reporting stockouts were in urban areas. There were more
stockouts in ambulatory (level 1) rather than inpatient care facilities (level 2); however, this was
not statistically significant (p>0.05). There was a significant difference in the type of health
professional and occurrence of stockouts with stockouts being more likely to occur with pharmacy
personnel than nurses. This study confirms that South Africa experiences medicine stockouts for
many of the essential medicines, with antiretroviral medication being the category most affected.
The stockouts vary between provinces and urban-rural divide, but threaten both levels 1 and 2
facilities similarly.
