Masebo should take responsibility and stop scandalising innocent hardworking professionals
Monday 8 May 2023
Health Minister Sylvia Masebo says there are no drugs in our hospitals because health workers are stealing the medicines.
The statement by the minister is not only false and misleading but shows just how incompetent, irresponsible, uncaring and shameless the Minister is. The persistent shortages of medicines and medical supplies in our hospitals is as a result of the failure by the Government to purchase and distribute the drugs to our healthcare facilities.
Here are the facts:
1. Parliament through the Committee on Health, Community Development And Social Services and the Office of the Auditor General have produced two audit reports concerning the shortages of medicines and medical supplies and the reasons for the shortages have nothing to do with what Masebo is saying.
According to the Government’s own Performance Audit Report the causes of the shortages of medicines and medical supplies are as follows:
1. Government’s failure to purchase and distribute medicines and medical supplies. Government cancelled contacts to buy and supply medicines and medical supplies without putting in place measures to sign new contracts;
2. Limited capacity by the Zambia Medicines & Medical Supplies Agency (ZAMMSA) to supply essential medicines and medical supplies. ZAMMSA doesn’t even know the country’s maximum needs/demand ratios and required medical stocks;
3. Discrepancies between dispatch notes and medicines delivered to district pharmacies; and health facilities;
4. Poor maintenance of medicine inventories; and inadequate qualified staff;
5. Government’s failure to increase budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Health to fifteen percent in line with the Abuja Declaration;
6. Government’s failure to give health institutions more autonomy in the purchase and procurement of drugs through decentralising the procurement of essential medicines to health facilities;
7. ZAMMSA’s failure to ensure compliance with the distribution schedules as well as its failure to improve forecasting and quantification of medicines and medical supplies by installing facility editions of the Logistics Information Management System at all health facilities;
8. The failure by ZAMMSA to supply Health Kits. This is because of the failure by Government to adequately fund the Ministry of Health and;
9. ZAMMSA’s failure to deliver medicines and medical supplies according to the distribution schedule. The major challenge highlighted was transport availability to enable the ZAMMSA meet the delivery schedule.
The Audit Reports have provided clear guidance and recommendations on the issue of the shortages of medicines and medical supplies in our clinics and hospitals. Guidelines and recommendations which Masebo and her Government have up to date failed to implement.
The recommendations that Masebo was given as follows:
1. The Ministry of Health should ensure that essential medicines were readily available at the health facilities by monitoring the demand and supply of essential medicines to determine timely identification of reducing stock.
2. ZAMMSA should improve the delivery and supply of medicines and medical supplies to health institutions by ensuring that all orders were delivered on time according to the distribution schedule.
3. The Ministry of Health must develop a database which would enable health facilities have access to information on the availability of medicines and medical supplies which were overstocked and under stocked in some health facilities and recommend for their redistribution to health facilities which may have low stock.
4. The Ministry of Health should improve the needs assessment at health facilities so that the risk of medicines expiring on the shelf was reduced by avoiding overstocking. Medicines with short shelf life should only be delivered to health facilities after consent had been received from the facilities or the Ministry of Health and it had been established that they would be used within a specified period.
5. The ZAMMSA and health facilities should continue adhering to the First Expiry First Out policy of managing essential medicines and medical supplies.
6. The ZAMMSA should ensure that the constructed hubs were stocked with all the essential medicines so as to efficiently and effectively distribute medicines and medical supplies in order to meet the delivery schedules.
7. The Ministry of Health should ensure the efficient deployment of available pharmacy personnel across the country so as to ensure that all pharmacies were manned by qualified pharmacy personnel.
8. Government must increase budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Health.
So Masebo should accept failure, take responsibility and stop maligning our innocent and hardworking health workers.
Issued by;
Antonio Mourinho Mwanza
Media Director
Patriotic Front
