Essential drugs

Primary Care facilities should resource appropriate drugs to manage the majority of common diseases and conditions that cause ill health in a community.

There will always be a wish list but finance, training, availability and disease profiles, in most cases will define a formulary suitable for the locality.

Our aim is to train our workers to use medicines with proven efficacy and the safest side effect profile.

We approach this by purchasing and storing a fixed formulary for acute infective diseases, analgesics, antihelminths, diuretics, anti-inflammatories and gastroentestinal drugs, plus ensure we know what is locally available to purchase in native stores. These can include symptomatic treatments , but sometimes useful injectables.

The formulary is drawn from the WHO (World Health Organisation) Essential Medicines

Each month the stocks are replenished to include IV fluids, dressings and diagnostics.

Due to budgetary constraints we cannot stock or supply free medications for chronic diseases, such as hypertension, epilepsy or diabetes but we diagnose, advise what to source and monitor. All medications for acute treatment are free however.

We model the drug provision on the WHO statement:

The core list presents a list of minimum medicine needs for a basic health care system, listing the most efficacious, safe and cost-effective medicines for priority conditions. Priority conditions are selected on the basis of current and estimated future public health relevance, and potential for safe and cost-effective treatment.  WHO 2007

The Delta State Government supplies New Foundations with Vaccines and artemesin anti-malarials