Looting the Treasury, Looting Funds Set-aside for the Health Sector
Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba Wrote;
The Zambian government earmarked K23.2 billion for the health sector in the 2025 National Budget, representing 10.7 percent of the total budget.
Of this amount K5.0 billion was dedicated to the procurement of medicines and medical supplies.
Similarly in 2023, the Ministry of Health’s total budget was K16.1 billion, with another chunk dedicated to medicines and medical supplies.
Zambia Medicines and Medical Supplies Agency (ZAMMSA), is a statutory body established by the Zambia Medicines and Medical Supplies Agency Act 2019 and has been charged with the mandate to procure, store and distribute medicines and medical supplies to all public health institutions in Zambia.
The Minister and the Permanent Secretary always give assurances, albeit false, of the sufficient stocks of medicines available.
Minister of Health, Elijah Muchima was so irritated by this paradox that he banned the giving of prescription papers to patients since government medicines stock was above the recommended World Health Organization (WHO) availability target of 80%.
Yet the country has a pathetic health care system suffering from obsolete hospital equipment, persistent lack of medicines, lack of medical supplies and laboratory reagents.
Diagnosis equipment such as CT scans x-ray, MRI and other equipment do not work or are non-existent for years now.
The cancer diseases hospital, once a centre of excellency for the sub-region is now death trap.
A thriving and efficient parallel market has since emerged providing expensive medicines, medical supplies and diagnosis services at great cost to our people.
Corruption, theft, pilfering and literal looting of the health funds has brought the system down to its bended knees!
This systemic failure of the health sector must be declared a national disaster so that an opportunity may arise to resolve and root out the fundamental problems in the sector.
President Hakainde Hichilema has a duty, for purposes of transparency, to authorise the public release of the recent forensic audit report that was done at the Ministry of Health and ZMMSA, to demonstrate the systemic rot if the institutions.
