title: Interest of a drug and therapeutics committee for the operation of a hospital in a developing country: Dapaong, Togo.
abstract: The department of pharmacy of the Regional Hospital of Dapaong is responsible for delivery of health products. We sought to assess the department's avoidable costs to optimize the hospital's drug policies and thereby improve patient care. This cost-forecasting study is intended to convince the hospital staff of the utility of setting up a drug and therapeutics committee and more particularly of developing a drug handbook for use within the public health institutions of the Savanna region. This prospective study seeks to improve the efficiency, quality, and availability of medicines by listing the references currently available at the Regional Hospital to demonstrate the percentage of duplicates and to show the references currently unavailable via "lost" sales. A retrospective study then estimated the loss of income from sales due to expired drugs. Our studies indicate that optimized management of the pharmacy would result in a potential gain of 14,914,397 FCFA, that is, 22,770 €. This significant savings could be used to improve the quality of care and promote quality assurance at the CHRD. The elimination of duplicates would allow the purchase of currently unavailable pharmaceutical classes (12,369,701 FCFA, that is, 18,885 € for reinvestment), and multidisciplinary collaboration with prescribers could reduce the losses associated with expired drugs (2,544,696 FCFA, or 3,885 €). These changes would improve the matching of the drugs prescribed at the CHRD and those delivered by the pharmacy.
authors.affiliation: Pharmacie et aide humanitaire, UFR des sciences pharmaceutiques, département formation continue et professionnelle, Département de formation continue et professionnelle, 1Bd Becquerel, 14032 Caen, France CHUG association Pharmacie et aide humanitaire Caen, France.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ben Yahya
mesh_terms: D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D003906:Developing Countries; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D010606:Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014037:Togo
keywords: Togo; drug and therapeutics committee; drug handbook; essential drugs