Pill counting becomes easier

A DONATION of pill-counting machines to the State pharmaceutical service will save staff hundreds of work hours, freeing them up to provide better service to State patients.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Health and Social Services accepted the donation of three tablet-counting machines from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). At the occasion, Debra Mosel, deputy USAID mission director in Namibia, explained that a survey done in 2009 found that over a period of three weeks, three staff members at the Katutura Hospital pharmacy spent a total of 200 hours, or 13 man-hours per day, pre-packing medicines. The tablet-counting machine will reduce this to one hour per day, she said.Mosel said the equipment should free up at least one or two pharmacy staff to attend to ‘other critical functions within the pharmacy and optimise the use of scarce human resources’.For now, only three machines have been made available and will be used to assess their impact. Petrina Haingura, Deputy Minister of Health, said the equipment will be allocated to the Katutura, Rundu and to Katima Mulilo State hospitals.She said the equipment would ‘go a long way towards improving efficient utilisation of limited numbers of pharmacy staff’.Mosel and Haingura warned staff that the equipment should be looked after and maintained.’We expect that the three receiving hospitals will budget for the maintenance of these vital pieces of equipment,’ Mosel said