KAMPALA- Members of Parliament are today expected to debate findings in the Public Accounts Committee reports on health sector, which revealed that Uganda Heart Institute operated for over 1,200 days without crucial medicine for treatment of heart conditions, while Butabika Mental Hospital registered drug stock outs for 372 days.
This followed findings by the Auditor General that revealed that on several occasions, health facilities experienced drug stock outs resulting into lack of several essential, vital and necessary drugs like; Losartan-H tablets, Amlodipine, Gauze, Blood transfusion sets, Cannulas G24, G22, Examination and Surgical gloves, Ferrous Salufate + Folic Acid, Plaster (Zink Oxide) adhesive and jik, Atesonate Inj, Oral Morphine, Artesunate Injection, Medroxprogesterone Acetate, Aciclovir cream, Lansoprazole among others.
“Butabika had stock outs between 64-372 days, Lira Regional Referral Hospital between 4-69 days, Arua RRH 28-182 days while Uganda Heart Institute suffered stock outs of over 1,000 days with Digoxine Inj for congestive heart failure missing for 1,210 days, Atesonate Inj for malaria treatment 440 days and Oral Morphine a pafn reliever for 174 days,” noted Muwanga Kivumbi, Chairperson Public Accounts Committee.
According to the Committee, Managers of these hospitals commonly attributed the anomaly to delayed deliveries by NMS, overwhelming number of patients, mismatch between supply and demand by NMS, nonresponse by responsible authorities including Ministry of Health, National Medical Stores to communications by Accounting Officers and inadequate annual budgetary allocation to medicines and specialized services.
The report indicated that although Moroto Hospital’s desired budget was to a tune of Shs1.28Bn, only 86M was allocated, while in Fortportal RRH, only Shs1.3Bn was allocated for medicines for a whole year.
Also 2 out of the 8 sampled medicines were not received from NMS as per the order.
