Maragua, Kenya

Tom Mwangi Kauki, Hospital Pharmacist

Area of work: Hospital Pharmacist, Maragua District Hospital

Background

My name is Tom Mwangi Kauki and I am a Pharmacist. I graduated with a Bachelor of Pharmacy from the University of Nairobi in Kenya in the year 2003.  I have worked for the Government of Kenya since my graduation in various hospitals.  The current hospital I am working in is called Maragua District Hospital which is a Public Hospital situated in a District called Maragua. I am the Hospital Pharmacist there and I have been working in the Maragua District Hospital since December 2004.

The Maragua District Hospital is a relatively small hospital with a 25-bed capacity but all the same it is very busy especially in the Out-Patient Department and HIV/AIDS clinic.  The Maragua District Hospital caters for the health needs of the total population of the district although even patients who reside outside Maragua District can visit our hospital for health care needs.

Describe your daily work routine  

These are my duties as a Hospital Pharmacist.

1. Outpatient dispensing
2. Training of students of Pharmacy, Clinical Officers and Pharmacy Technicians
3. Procurement and record keeping of the distribution of drugs
4. Pharmacy monthly meetings
5. Community Projects such as Free Medical Camps.
6. Antiretroviral therapy. This is my main role in the hospital and I am responsible for:

  • Dispensing of ARVs to the treatment naive patients and the treatment experienced patient
  • Administering adherence counselling to the patients who are to start therapy and also on an ongoing basis to the treatment experienced patients.
  • Monitoring adherence to ART. This is mainly done through pill counts.
  • Record-keeping of the patients ARVs history. In this regard we have a computerized ARV dispensing tool, which enables us to automatically tell which patients are defaulters. This report enables the recently formed Defaulter Tracing Team of the hospital to trace these patients. The programme also enables us to tell the flow of ARVs.

What are the greatest difficulties you encounter in your work environment?

I basically work in a resource-constrained setting. Some of the challenges include:

1. Infrastructure not fully developed. This leads to limitations to the extent where your knowledge as a Pharmacist is not fully exploited. Some Pharmacists have being known to claim that they are not fully challenged in the Public Service. Consider for example, the hospital that I work in has a 25-bed capacity, which is supposed to cater for the health needs of the whole district with a population of about 200,000 people.

2. Small salary. The government is constrained with a huge recurrent budget of paying salaries and hence it is adamant in not increasing the salaries.

All the same, this is the scenario in most of the developing countries and by the end of the day we have to make do with what we have. Whenever there is a will there is a way.
It boils down to having the priorities right.

I still have great pride in being a Pharmacist irrespective of working in resource-constrained settings. I have ambitions of pursuing a Masters in Public Health with a focus on Tropical Medicine.

Checking an antiretroviral therapy card
What I am holding is an ART treatment card which has a number which I am checking in the ART dispensing tool installed into the computer in order to get the patient data such as the regimen patients is on and the adherence level. The ARV was dispensed to the patient after his data was retrieved from the computer and the drugs he had remaining were counted to establish adherence.

(Photo of Tom in hospital pharmacy)