Vol 11, Issue 2, 2018 Online - 2455-3891 Print - 0974-2441 ASSESSMENT OF THE STATUS OF PRIVATE AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL PHARMACEUTICALS SUPPLY WAREHOUSES IN GAZA STRIP, PALESTINE. MOHAMMED TABASH*, MAZEN ABUQAMAR ABSTRACT Objective: Storage of medicine is one of the most important stages in the pharmaceuticals and medical preparations management, which influences the quality and the effectiveness of these products. The study was conducted to assess the storage system of the drugs, medical disposables and their management in the private and local NGOs medical warehouses in Gaza Strip. Methods: A cross-sectional study using interviewing questionnaire and checklist was carried out at (16) local NGOs including 33 employees and (29) private warehouses including 57 employees. Results: The quality of construction of private and local warehouses were enough satisfied (80%), while stock management and quality control were in a need to improvement (44.5%), in which the quality of stock control and conditions of local NGOs were higher than private warehouses. Inadequate training courses were given in store related work. The majority of warehouses did not have practical guidelines and written procedures for dealing with storage procedure; also, there is inadequate safety and security system. About 37% of them kept controlled drugs in a separate storage space designated for this purpose. More than half of warehouses always quarantined medical supplies until the quality is checked. 60% of warehouses used first expire first out dispensing policy for medical supplies. 56% of the warehouses measure temperature, while not all warehouses measured humidity. Conclusion: Warehouses need to pay attention to the commodity management cycle and to ensure the availability of safety measurements. Provision of training to employees dealing with the storage process is essential accompanied by monitoring and supervision. Keywords: Pharmaceuticals supply, Quality control, Storage condition, Stock Management, Medical warehouse. INTRODUCTION Maintaining appropriate storage conditions for health commodities is vital to ensuring its quality. Product quality is based on ideal storage conditions and protection of products’ quality until their expiration date is important for serving customers and conserving resources [1-3]. All buildings should be maintained clean, large enough, constructed and located in a way to facilitate cleaning and maintaining of good storage conditions of drugs and drug products [4,5]. All building should be well lighted and ventilated. All floors, walls, ceilings, tables, and other fixtures should be constructed in a way that they may be easily cleaned [6]. Pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists are responsible for ensuring that products/materials are correctly handled stored and distributed. They should have the education, training experience or combination of these elements that will allow them to effectively discharge this responsibility [7]. Controlled storage environments (deep freeze, refrigerators) should be monitored using suitable temperature recording devices, and the records should be filled and reviewed. Temperatures in other areas where goods requiring specific storage conditions are held should be monitored and the results tabulated and analyzed to demonstrate the suitability of these areas for their purposes [6]. Each medical warehouse should maintain a standard list of stock items that include all products they handle, with their specifications, including form, and quantity per package. The list should be regularly updated and distributed to sub-stores and units. Records of all stocks received their sources, batch numbers, expiry dates, and quantities received should be maintained [8]. Proper storage conditions for pharmaceutical products and paramedical supplies are vital to ensure their quality, safety, and efficacy. Successful storage should maintain the received drugs in the same quantity and quality until they are issued and minimize stock holding costs while maintaining acceptable service level. Since the starts of Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, the pharmaceutical sectors have been suffering the consequences of the prevailing political situation, ranging from closure and siege imposed on the Palestinian people in Gaza Governorates. Huge amount of uncoordinated donations was received. Subsequently, lot of these donations were damaged or expired due to inadequate storage conditions. However, the process of drugs and disposable storage at local NGOs and private warehouses has not been studied, therefore, investigation of this issue is important to improve the current storage system and the potential corrective measures. METHODS The study was conducted in private and local NGO warehouses located in Gaza Strip. A cross-sectional study was designed and conducted using interviewing questionnaire and checklist according the criteria proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Pharmaciens Sans Frontiers to evaluate the quality of pharmaceutical inventory management system at medical warehouses facilities. The study was conducted at (16) local NGOs including 33 employees and (29) private warehouses including 57 employees. Any employee who has no direct responsibilities in the storage procedures, such as secretaries, cleaners were excluded. In detail, through questionnaire and checklist, the assessment involves gauge the infrastructure, storage facility conditions, arrangement of © 2018 The Authors. Published by Innovare Academic Sciences Pvt Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4. 0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22159/ajpcr.2018.v11i2.22639 Research Article Department of Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Al-Azhar University, Gaza, Palestine. Email: mohtabash@gmail.com Received: 18 September 2017, Revised and Accepted: 18 November 2017