Assessment of quality of pharmacy outlets in private private hospital in Dar es salaam

Objective: To assess the quality of pharmacy outlets in private hospitals in Dar es Salaam. Design: Cross sectional questionnaire survey conducted, during March-May 2008, of 15 private hospital pharmacies selected from private hospital list of 18. Setting: All Private hospital pharmacies located in Dar es Salaam city. Study participants: A pharmacist or (if unavailable) the most experienced drug dispenser Results: No private hospital pharmacies mate all the quality requirements; however all have qualified pharmacist only 88.7% had a Pharmaceutical Technician and none of them had an Assistant pharmaceutical technician. All hospital pharmacies had Dispensing and Storerooms. Only 80% of the pharmacy had all minimum required furniture and equipment in Dispensing room. No pharmacies had all equipment for dispensing. Books used for reference, most of the hospital pharmacy. cies were using the British National Formulary and Tanzania National Formulary while fewer reported to be using the TFDA List of Registered Medicines (13.3%), or the National Essential Drugs List (20%) and Good Dispensing Manual (8.7%). Only 73.3% had Expired Drugs Book and inspection Reports Registers book and almost % had prescription only medicines book and controlled drugs Book, few had books for Complaints Handling (40%), Visitors (27.8%), and Written procedure for maintenance of cold chain products (8.7%) Among the hospital pharmacies studied 39% do not train their staff pharmacy members at all, 27% train their staff pharmacy members per year. The same percentage (27%) carryout staff training when need arise and the remaining 8% train their staff pharmacy members after each six months. Almost all interviewed hospital pharmacies practice Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) with only 1% deviating from this practice. Conclusion: No hospital pharmacies had met all minimum requirements for registration according to TFDA regulations Keywords: Quality, pharmacy outlets, private hospitals