GOVERNMENT hospitals are operating with less than 50% of required drugs due to lack of adequate funding, Health and Child Care deputy minister Paul Chimedza has said.
NQOBANI NDLOVU STAFF REPORTER
Chimedza said the government had no money to stock public hospitals with required life-saving drugs.
“At the rural health centre, essentially the drug level there is okay. It ranges from 75% to 95% in terms of vital drugs, essential drugs and necessary ones. . .because all the rural health centres — 80% of them — are supported by the multi-lateral partners,” he said.
“The problem starts as we go higher. In the district hospitals, they have drugs but the stocking level is low.
“It is around 60% and as we go to the provincial hospitals, it becomes even more acute and in the central hospitals, the drugs are even less than 50% stocking levels in some institutions.”
Chimedza revealed this in the Senate last Thursday in response to a question by the MDC-T senator for Zaka, Misheck Marava, on the drug stoking levels at government health delivery institutions.
Chimedza said the drug shortages could sorely be blamed on the failure of the government to capacitate the National Pharmaceutical Company (NatPham) to produce and supply hospitals.
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“As the government, we have failed to provide money for them (NatPham) to buy the drugs and sell them to the public hospitals and to our public entities,” he said.
“As a result, there is shortage of drugs in central hospitals, provincial hospitals and district hospitals.
“The Ministry of Health and Child Care has put a request to Treasury for $10 million which has to go to NatPharm, but because of the shortage of funds, I think we were only allocated $3 million and we have not received most of it at the moment.
“So we are looking at a different situation on how we can solve the problem.
“One of them is to engage companies that supply drugs so that they can create credit facilities or lines of credit of which NatPharm can procure the drugs that we want and then distribute them to the hospitals so that they get paid,” he said.
