NEWS: ‘Hospitals cause drug shortage’

‘Hospitals cause drug shortage’

Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 from NEW VISION

Hospitals and health centres do not follow procurement rules, causing a delay in the delivery of drugs, officials from National Medical Stores (NMS) have said. They said the shortage was also being caused by health officials, who diverted funds meant to procure drugs for health centres. “Health centre administrators complain of lack of money to procure drugs, but 70% of Government funds for procurement of primary health care drugs, is diverted to unauthorised expenditures,” the medical stores general manager, Moses Kamabare, said. He was speaking to MPs on the social services committee who yesterday made an unexpected visit to the National Medical Stores to find out if there was a shortage of drugs and whether drugs had expired in the stores. Kamabare said the stores had enough drugs to cover all the hospitals in the country. He disclosed that Mulago Hospital did not buy most of its drugs from the medical stores. “The Government allocated sh10b to Mulago in the 2006/7 financial year but when we checked our records, they did not procure any drugs from here,” Kamabare said. He clarified that district officials and the health centres did not follow the right procurement procedures. “Hospitals sometimes neglect the procedures. We send the drug requisition forms at least two months before they make orders but they fail to give the details of the drugs an sometimes the amount of money is not equal to the quantity of the drugs that are requisitioned for,” Kamabare explained The committee chairperson, Rosemary Sseninde (NRM), said most referral hospitals and health centres had accused the medical stores of failure to deliver drugs. She said the committee would compile a report to be tabled in Parliament for debate.