Bauchi strengthens drugs revolving fund services

By:Monday Danladi, Bauchi

Bauchi State Government has taken steps to strengthen effective and efficient service delivery in the health sector by ensuring that the Drugs Revolving Fund (DRF) in the facilities.

Consequently, the State Drugs and Medical Consumables Management Agency (DMMA), has trained a total of 800 health workers selected from 264 facilities across Bauchi State.

The focus of the training was on the management of Drugs Revolving Fund for effective and efficient service delivery.

Managing Director of DMMA, Pharmacist Abdulkadir Ahmed, while speaking to Health Reporters on the training said that it was very essential in achieving the goals and objectives of the Agency.

He explained that the training programme became necessary in order to prevent the mismanagement of essential drugs and medical commodities that are supplied to the facilities.

Abdulkadir Ahmed also said that three personnel per facility were selected alongside essential Desk Officers and some Directors of Primary Healthcare Departments of the local government areas.

The DMMA MD stated that, “Okay, first and foremost, for us to know why the Agency was established. Of course, the Agency was established to primarily ensure that health commodities, that is, essential medicines and medical procedurals, are made available to the citizenry of Bauchi State, particularly through the public health facilities.”

He added that, “And, of course, it is an organisation that was established more than 10 years ago. And, of course, since then, we have been trying to make sure that all our public health facilities received essential medicines and consumables so that citizens of Bauchi State who need them, get them.”

According to him, “And, as we all know, I believe, up to the year 2021-2022, we were running within the secondary facilities. However, with the advent of this administration in 2019, we were able to scale up to all the main PHCs that we have, that is, 323 main PHCs and then 26 secondary health facilities plus one tertiary health facility, that is Specialist Hospital in Bauchi.”

He added that, “And when we on-boarded them at that time, all the relevant facilities staff were trained, including even some community leaders, through the support of USAID at that time.”

He further stated that, “So now, after about three years, of course, in 2025, we wrote a request to to the Governor, requesting us to expand the scope of the drug-revolving fund from the 352 facilities to at least 50% of the health facilities in Bauchi State, meaning to about 616 health facilities.”

According to him,”And we wrote the memo and gladly, he gave us the approval to do that. So, of course, that is why, before we started this training, we had to do what we call health facility assessment.”

He disclosed that, “We selected 264 health facilities across the state, of course, in collaboration with the state-run Healthcare Development Agency and the local governments.”

According to him, “The DMMA didn’t do the selection. We sent letters to the local governments to select the facilities that they feel they want us to implement the Drugs Revolving Fund (DRF) within the facilities. And they did that, and we selected some of our experts, trained them, and sent them to do due diligence and ensure that the facilities are ready to receive commodities.”

“Those that were not ready to receive commodities, of course, observations were made as to what they should do to make them ready for receiving commodities. Some of them do not have dispensaries. Some of them, they have dispensaries and stores, but they do not have shelves,” he explained.

According to him,”Some of their windows are not burglary-proof and well-protected, and all those observations were documented and sent to the LGAs. Some of them have already heeded to the observations, and they have made the necessary corrections.”

He also stated that, “So after that, of course, obviously, is to train their facilities. In DRF, we don’t just send the commodities to the facility without training them, so that is why we are training them.”

He stressed that, “And even before this training, we did what we call the training of trainers. We selected staff mostly from our secondary facilities, pharmacies, some Accountants, some Doctors, some Nurses, about 40 of them. We trained them about two weeks ago.”

“We invited an external trainer, actually. We did the training, and after that, of course, we do what we call the step-down training. And the step-down training that we are doing now, we have sent all those 40 across the facilities to train the staff,” he added.

Abdulkadir Ahmed assured that at the end of the training when the scheme will fully take off, the objectives will be achieved as the target population of poor people will have direct access to effective and efficient service delivery at the facilities.