E-drug: Uganda: Parliament blocks sale of medical stores
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Copied as fair use. HH]
The Monitor, 4 December 2003
Kampala - Parliament has rejected the move by government to
privatise the National Medical Stores.
State Minister for Finance in charge of Privatisation Prof. Peter
Kasenene had asked Parliament to amend the Public Enterprise
Reform and Divestiture (Perd) Statute to allow government to sell 49
percent of National Medical Stores. NMS is not listed for privatisation.
In rejecting the privatization of NMS, the chairman of the
Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Maj. Bright Rwamirama said
that as a government department NMS would remain a better channel
through which cheap and essential drugs could reach the masses.
Parliament therefore feared that the privatization of NMS would lower
the quality of some essential drugs. It has been reported that some
drugs are sold cheaply because they have a shorter shelf life. NMS
supplies about 80 per cent of drugs procured for Mulago national
referral hospital.
Rwamirama said that being a bulk buyer NMS easily meets its
statutory and commercial obligations as it can provide credit facilities
to Mulago and district referral hospitals.
"The organisation has enabled Ugandans to have drugs of long shelf
life especially those that are rare and not profitable. NMS ensures
easy availability and affordability of drugs by the entire population
nation-wide," Rwamirama said in a report by the Finance committee,
which he presented to the house December 2.
The NMS was created by statutory instrument number 12 of 1993 to
procure in bulk, store and distribute drugs and medical supplies to the
entire health sector.
He said that NMS charge uniform prices to all districts regardless of
the distance from the centre to where the drugs are to be taken.
Joseph Serutoke, Jr.
Pharmacist, Uganda
e-mail: serutokej@who.imul.com
--
To send a message to E-Drug, write to: e-drug@healthnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@healthnet.org
in the body of the message type: subscribe e-drug OR unsubscribe e-drug
To contact a person, send a message to: e-drug-help@healthnet.org
Information and archives: http://www.essentialdrugs.org/edrug