Title: Ordering, recording and controlling supplies
Course: Health Management, Ethics and Research - Ethiopia (Full)

Ordering, recording and controlling supplies

You should include the following information when you order supplies from the woreda Health Office:

- List the number of items you require, based on past use and estimates of current use.
- You may also need to order replacements for equipment, e.g. a new thermometer if the one originally issued has broken or been lost.
- State the exact type of each item, e.g. torch battery, 1.5 volt.
- State the quantity of each item, e.g. kerosene, 20 litres per month.

Each item delivered to the Health Post (whether consumable or non-consumable) will be accompanied by either an invoice or a delivery note. You must place invoices and delivery notes in separate files normally kept for that purpose and labelled appropriately. Receipt of the new item should be entered in the stock book (Table 6.3). After the supplies have been ordered, received and recorded in the stock book, they may be issued for use when needed and the balance remaining in stock recorded in the book (see the right-hand columns in Table 6.3).

Table 6.3 Example of an entry in the stock book at a typical rural Health Post.

Item | Date received | Received from | Invoice number | Quantity received | Quantity issued, date | Balance in stock
Cotton wool rolls, non-sterile | 1/4/2010 | Woreda store | 456 | 10 rolls |  | 12 rolls
 |  |  |  |  | 2 rolls 5/4/2010 | 10 rolls
 |  |  |  |  | 4 rolls 28/4/2010 | 6 rolls

When you are first deployed to a Health Post, you should make an inventory of the consumables and equipment (Figure 6.5). An inventory is a list of items that are kept in your Health Post – the name of each piece of equipment or consumable item and the number in stock (see Tables 6.1 and 6.2 for examples). Each Health Post should keep an inventory of its supplies and new items are added to the list as they arrive.

Figure 6.5 Making an inventory of new equipment is an essential step in opening a new Health Post, as this Health Extension Worker is doing. (Photo: Lesley-Anne Long)