Abstract
The problem of medicine stock-outs is prevalent in South African public hospitals with the Western Cape province encountering stock-outs of insulin, steroids as well as chemotherapy drugs in 2012. In 2012, the North West province had the highest number of facilities with stock-outs of Salbutamol inhaler while the Limpopo province had the highest percentage of facilities with stock-outs of Metformin. In 2014, 12% of public health facilities countrywide recorded stock-outs of at least one of rotavirus and measles vaccines and 28% of public health facilities were affected by Pentaxim stock-outs in Limpopo while 10% of public health facilities in the Eastern Cape reported a shortage of Rotavirus vaccine. Stock-outs of Dexamethasone tablets were reported in 2020 because of a rapid increase in demand after being hailed as a breakthrough treatment to help reduce deaths to severely ill COVID-19 patients.
While the problem of stock-outs is prevalent in South African public hospitals, research was conducted from the perspectives of hospitals, pharmacies and clinics, with a major cause of supply failure. Stock-outs were classified as medicine manufacturing challenges, demand uncertainty, distribution and logistics challenges and low profitability. The aim of this study was to investigate the causes of stock-outs in South African public hospitals but from the perspective of manufacturers and distributors.
A quantitative research design was employed using a survey research strategy. Data was collected from 80 pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors listed on the South African government’s master procurement list (MPL) database. They supply 1 122 medicines to public hospitals. Correlation analysis was used to measure the relationship between the dependant variable (medicine stock-outs) and independent variables (manufacturing challenges, demand uncertainty, distribution and logistics challenges and profitability challenges). Multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine if the independent variables had an impact on medicine stock-outs in South African public hospitals. The findings of this research indicated a positive correlation between medicine stock-outs and each of the manufacturing and profitability challenges.
Keywords: Distributors, manufacturers, pharmaceutical, public hospitals, stock-outs, supply failure