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Browsing Public Health by Author "Bandawe, Ted"

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    Assessing the impact of health centre management committees in curbing drug pilferage and promoting public service delivery: A case of Chitipa district
    (Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, 2020-12-01) Bandawe, Ted
    Chitipa District Hospital registers high numbers of drug cases due to pilferage despite the availability of Health Centre Management Committees (HCMC). One of the key responsibilities of HCMCs is to monitor drug and supply chain at both facility and community level. This comes against the background that 15% of the stock outs at Chitipa Distric Hospital were due to drug pilferage in 2018. At national level, millions of drug funds are lost every year due to drug pilferage. However, since the introduction of the national drug investigation unit (DTIU) in 2017, drug theft cases have declined and most perpetrators were apprehended. Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant interviews were used to collect data in five facilities in Chitipa. A total of 100 (48 males, 52 females) participated in the study. Of these thirty (11 males, 19 females) were members of Health Centre Management Committee and ten (4 males, 6 females) were local leaders. The rest that took part in the focus group discussions were community members affiliated to HCMC committees. Lack of Information among community members is one factor contributing to poor functionality of the Health Centre management committees. What is clearly emanating from this research is that grassroots’ participation in Chitipa District council is a farfetched idea because local elites are exploiting the new found window of opportunity in the decentralization initiative to promote patronage and neopatriomonism at the expense of the grassroots participation in decision-making. The study could not establish strength of association between the factors identified and the functionality of the HCMCs. The findings highlight the importance of using the socio-ecological model in community engagement so as to identify and address factors at every level.