Josephine Maseruka
19 January 2009Kampala — NEARLY 70% of the drugs used in Government health facilities are not labelled.
According to the National Medical Stores (NMS), the unlabelled drugs are easier to divert to private clinics.
Moses Kamabare, the NMS general manager, yesterday told a press conference at Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala that NMS only supplies between 30 and 40% of drugs used in the over 3,000 Government health facilities.
As the main Government body responsible for procuring drugs, Kamabare reasoned that the Government must insist on all its health facilities buying drugs from the NMS.
"The 60 to 70% drugs are procured through district and health facilities outside the NMS and the drugs are not labelled which is a loop hole in curbing drug theft from Government facilities," said Kamabare.
President Yoweri Museveni directed the NMS to label all Government drugs to curb the theft of medicines.
In September 2008, NMS started embossing the drugs wth the 'UG' label to distinguish them as Government drugs.
Kamabare was flanked by the NMS corporation secretary, Apollo Mwesigye, and the spokesperson, Hamis Kaheru.
The officials said there would be faster delivery of drugs if the Government directly sent the money for procurement to NMS instead of the health ministry.
"Due to delayed release of funds, NMS often resorts to borrowing from commercial banks at high interest rates," he said.
Kamabare explained that the money spent on repaying the loans would be used to buy more drugs and equipment.
In response to a question about the sacrcity of the rabies vaccine, Kamabare said the vaccine was only supplied to Government health facilities by the health ministry.
Kamabare said NMS was targeting sh36b of business this financial year if the Government could allocate it sh15b of which sh10b would be for essential drugs.
He regretted the auditor general's report for the year ending June 30, 2007 which claimed that NMS only delivered sh13.5b of medical supplies of the ordered supplies worth sh19.6b, giving a 68% performance.
He clarified that medical orders were worth sh12b and NMS supplied over sh13b of medicines.
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