Improving pharmaceutical care of HIV/AIDS patients in low resource settings: The case of Port Reitz District Hospital in Kenya

To support the treatment of persons living with HIV/AIDS, health care providers must document and maintain patients' treatment-related information; however, in Kenya, pharmacy records are often inadequate.

Management Sciences for Health (MSH) worked with pharmacy staff at the Port Reitz District Hospital (PRDH) in Mombasa to implement a simple electronic tool for tracking antiretroviral medicine dispensing. PRDH introduced the antiretroviral treatment dispensing tool in July 2005; MSH trained four pharmacy staff members on the software and installed a computer. The tool enables staff to record patient demographics, regimens, medicines dispensed, refill dates, and other details, including adverse drug events. In addition, the tool tracks inventory and generates medication consumption reports.

By December 2007, pharmacy staff had created 1,195 patient medication histories using the tool. Adverse drug events were documented and followed up in over 30 patients. Each month, pharmacy staff use the tool to provide a list of patients who fail to collect medicine refills to community health workers for follow-up, which contributes to PRDH's low treatment default rate of 5% (64/1195). Staff have used the tool's data to avert medication errors, drug interactions, and adverse reactions. Because of a lag in implementing the tool at the pharmacy, staff had to initially populate the software using existing paper records, which took time.

Use of simple IT tools in resource-limited settings is feasible and provides staff with a way to improve pharmaceutical care of patients living with HIV/AIDS. To sustain IT use in such settings, there is need to provide basic computer training and on-site IT support.