E6M FOR MEDICAL STOCK SECURITY

MBABANE – The Ministry of Health has invested over E6 million to guard against the theft of medication stock.

This is because the medication stock will now be monitored electronically and intelligently at the Central Medical Stores (CMS).

The ministry, through its stakeholder, the National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA), has provisionally awarded a tender worth E6 039 548 (USD$ 353.848) to Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) for electronic logistics management information systems for CMS.  CHAI is a global organisation that was founded in 2002 with a transformational goal to help save the lives of millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world by dramatically scaling up antiretroviral treatment.

NERCHA Chief Financial Officer Dumisani Kunene said the electronic logistics management information system was an inventory management system, which basically tracked commodities from a health facility and linked up to CMS.  He said it was a stock management system that rested at a facility, for instance, at hospitals.

It would interface with CMS so that the hospitals could place orders electronically and CMS could have visibility of all stock levels at facility level to ensure that there were no expired or  minimum wreckages or no wreckages at all.

“What is happening currently is that they are pushing papers from a facility to CMS and the latter does not have online visibility of the stock levels at health facilities. The information that CMS has to manage the stock is following behind so this initiative is trying to ensure that CMS has visibility of the stock and they can instruct facilities to exchange stock with others to avoid being in possession of some of the expiring medication,” he said.

Kunene further explained that the system was also meant to avoid stock-outs. He said in the event the storeman at CMS forgot to requisition medication, they could simply just push the medication to that facility through the system.

Record

“If a truck leaves CMS to deliver at a health facility, they would record what is expected to be delivered in those facilities and as the truck delivers, the people in those facilities would log into the system to capture the arriving stock and CMS, on a quick basis, would be able to reconcile,” he said.
Kunene said to guard against the disappearance of medication, government needed the system but he stated that it would of course be enhanced by the availability of security cameras at CMS. 

“If the medication stock has been delivered at the heath facility and while being utilised, CMS will have access of the records of the usage of the medication through the same system. No medication will be utilised without CMS knowing about it and it would be easy for CMS to hold people accountable in cases of theft of the medication when the organisation does its stock count,” said Kunene. 

Incidents of drugs being stolen at CMS have been reported in the past.
In March 2016, this publication reported that expired drugs, worth about E10 million, were stolen from the CMS.

This was according to the Auditor General’s report for the year ended March 2015, which stated that the drugs were stolen and probably sold, which was hazardous to the health of the nation.

Meanwhile, CHAI beat two local and two South Africa-based companies to the multi-million tender. Coming second after CHAI process was West Chase Consultants, a local company that scored 71 per cent on the evaluation process. Another local company in CYB/SAB came third and scored 53 per cent in evaluation.

Score

The others are Mint Group and ACCTECH Solutions both from South Africa and they scored 39.8 and 47.5 per cent hence failing to meet the minimum qualifying technical score of 70 per cent.

 “It must be noted that, in terms of Section 45(2) of the Act, the above contract award decision does not constitute a contract. Further, in terms of section 45(4), 46, and 47 of the Act, all tenderers who submitted bids are hereby notified that a period of 10 working days is hereby allowed for submission of any application for review from the above stated date of first publication of this notice,” reads the notice of the tender.

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