The Vice President of the Republic of Uganda H.E Jessica Alupo has lauded National Medical Stores for strengthening the drug supply chain to improve health service delivery in Uganda.
While touring National Medical Stores Headquarters in Entebbe this Friday morning, Alupo acknowledged the gaps being exploited to steal drugs from health facilities, saying these will be addressed with the latest innovations put in place National Medical Stores.
“The Ugandan population need medicines in government health units and sometimes they are disappointed when they hear stories of medicines getting stolen. I am happy to discover from here today that whereas NMS has sufficient volumes of medicines in their stores for all government facilities and delivers them to the respective health facilities as per their mandate, there is a grey area that we need to pay attention to as government so that all these health facilities benefit’’, said Alupo.
The National Medical Stores’ mandate is to procure, store and distribute medicines and medical supplies to government health facilities.
However, once NMS delivers medicines to the respective health facilities, in-charges of the respective government-owned health facilities are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that medicines are secured and administered to patients free of charge.
‘‘We have discovered that there is a gap from the time NMS delivers drugs to health facilities as our mandate dictates, and when the drugs are administered to patients. We would like to call upon all Ugandans to be vigilant and report any cases of drug thefts in their respective facilities. On our part as NMS, we are innovating new ways to address these gaps introducing innovations to improve visibility in the ordering and distribution of vaccines,” said Mr. Moses Kamabare, the National Medical Stores General Manager.
The Vice President noted that the introduction of the NMS+ ERP tool, a new initiative of National Medical Stores with support from USAID, which is an online monitoring tool aimed at improving transparency and accountability in the ordering of medicines, will go a long way in improving visibility in the ordering and tracking how medicines are delivered and dispensed to patients.