Abstract:
Background: Globally, more than eight million under-five children die every year because
of diseases that could be treated or prevented with drug therapy. Thus, this study aimed to
evaluate the utilization and availability of the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested
priority life-saving medicines for under-five-year-old children in Gondar town.
Methods: Institutional-based cross-sectional survey was conducted from March 2020 to
May 2020 in public health centers of Gondar town. Data entry and validation were performed
in EpiData 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for descriptive analysis like frequency,
percentage, mean, standard deviation, and median.
Results: The availability of zinc phosphate and oral rehydration salt for the diarrheal cases
was 57.14% and 85.71%, respectively. The availabilities of amoxicillin dispersible tablet and
gentamicin injection for the treatments of pneumonia cases were 71.43% and 42.85%,
respectively, and the availability of paracetamol tablet was high (85.71%). The availabilities
of artemether/lumefantrine tablet and artesunate rectal were ranged between fairly high
(57.1%) to very low (28.5%), respectively, and the availabilities of zidovudine/lamivudine/
nevirapine-based antiretroviral regimen was 100%, a utilization for this regimen was high
(96.29%). Two (3.70%) of the surveyed cases were utilized lopinavir/ritonavir-based regimen. The utilization of priority medicines was low for pain management and pneumonia
which was 18.5% and 48.18%, respectively.
Conclusion: The study concluded that medicine was not consistently available throughout
public health centers in Gondar town. Thus, this finding suggests the integration of WHOrecommended life-saving priority medicines into the essential drug management systems and
health unit logistics to raise their utilization and availability.
Keywords: availability, utilization, priority medicines, Gondar, Ethiopia
