Drug Distribution Strategies and Availability of Drugs in Hospitals in the Rural Areas of Jos, Plateau State

Abstract

The study investigates drug distribution strategies and the availability of drugs in hospital in the rural areas of Jos, Plateau State, while the following specific objectives are also considered and they include to; investigates the impact of traditional drug distribution strategy, inpatient services drug distribution strategy, floor stock system of drug distribution strategy and unit dose drug distribution strategy on the effective management of hospital in the rural Areas of Jos, Plateau State. Four research questions and hypotheses guide the study. The design for the study was descriptive. The population for this study consists of all staff and patient in hospitals in the rural areas of Jos, Plateau State, while the target population is about 2,875 inpatients, outpatients and hospital staff as the respondents. The composition was as follows; Inpatient s (1,510) which is 52% of the entire respondents, outpatients (960) which is 33% of the entire respondents and hospital staff (405) which makes up the 15% of the respondents. The sample size for the study is 357 representing 13% of the total population of 3, 320 which was determined using Taro Yamane’s formulae. The simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting the sample size. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire and it was prepared to cover the objectives of the study. However, it was submitted to the research supervisors for vetting and validation before it was administered to the respondents. The reliability of the instrument was tested using the test-retest method, 20 respondents were randomly selected from rural hospitals in a nearby state to Jos after which, the exercise was repeated on the same set of respondents in order to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. The Cronbach’s alpha co- efficient were used to test research instruments for reliability co-efficient result of 0.70 was accepted. The results of the average and t-test distribution of the resp