Pharmacists Call for Law Backing Drug Revolving Fund Scheme

The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has applauded the National Assembly for the adoption of a motion to resuscitate the Drug Revolving Fund (DRF) in Federal Health Institutions (FHIs) and calls for the establishment of an Act of parliament to strengthen the supply and quality assurance of essential drugs for Nigerians at affordable cost.

PSN recounted how the DRF project created by the Essential Drug Decree 43 of 1989 and entrenched in the statutes as Cap 252 LFN 2004 was truncated because of mismanagement of the scheme by various Federal Health Institutions (FHIs).
DRF scheme is a scheme where drugs and medical consumables are sold at cost price, plus a markup, and the revenue is used to replenish stocks, while ensuring that drugs remain affordable to those who need them.

President of PSN, Prof. Cyril Usifoh, said the DRF initiative was a well-thought contingency solution to end perennial out-of-stock syndromes in the nation’s health institutions by ensuring uninterrupted access to essential medications for the public, as well as address indebtedness to pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers.

He lamented the scuttling of the scheme because of the introduction of a strange control mechanism by the hospitals’ management.
Usifoh, commended the House Committee on Health Institutions for the motion on the collapse of the Drug Revolving Fund (DRF) in Federal Health Institutions (FHIs), saying it would restore the main objectives of the scheme which included effective control and management of  drug procurement, quantification and quality assurance in the country’s health system.

Usifoh said the creation of DRF under the old Essential Drug Decree 43 of 1989 which is now entrenched in the statutes as Cap 252 LFN 2004, ordinarily, ‘’should compel all health institutions to embrace the concept which according to him, was working very well up to the mid-nineties before the major tenets of the scheme as spelt out in the DRF manuals were truncated by the various hospital management.’’

He further explained that, ‘’ Some of the major highlights of the DRF scheme compel operators to guarantee Cost Recovery Mechanisms which is the philosophy behind a revolving fund with regards to basic norms in resource management.

It was also established to ensure Cost Recovery in DRF. The enabling manuals prescribe that the DRF Committee must have a Project Manager, who is usually the HOD/Director of Pharmacy in the FHIs and an Accountant who will be co-signatories, to insist that DRF are not diverted from the core responsibility of making drugs available in public health facilities.

‘’Over the years, the PSN has observed a systematic debasement of the DRF concept by the different Hospital managements particularly because they romanced fatalistic foreign spirits antithetical to the growth of the DRF schemes.

‘’The PSN puts on record that in a well-advertised memorandum signed by Mr. Linus Awute, the then Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) in 2010 on the directive of former President, Goodluck Jonathan, the FMoH directed the FHIs to appreciate that the basic tenets of drug procurement including drug quantification, quality assurance and sources of drugs used in the health system were the professional prerogative of the Pharmacists which were validated in existing Pharmacy laws.