Publication

Abstract : pOver the years it has been established that accessibility of drugs is one of the priorities to improve health care. To overcome the problem of non-availability of drugs to the general public and to ensure steady supply of essential medicines at reasonable and affordable rate, couple of Indian States in 1994 ventured to introduce innovative methods in medicine procurement. It helped to make uninterrupted availability of essential medicines in their government hospitals. Many Indian states including Kerala have introduced centralized pool purchase system for procuring medicines for their hospitals. In this article we mainly focus on the drug procurement system adopted by the Kerala state. A systematic review of available literature and internet resources were performed. Official websites of the Govt of Kerala, Department of Health and Family welfare, Nutritional Rural Health Mission Kerala unit (Arogya Keralam) were reviewed. Information were also obtained from and other credible websites and also documents obtained through search engines like google. Various articles published by reputed journals and government orders were reviewed. The existing system of Drug Procurement and Distribution needs to be upgraded and our conclusion is that there is a need for a new alternative Drug Procurement and Distribution system which is both affordable and effective for the provider and the beneficiary. © 2015, Global Research Online. All rights reserved./p