MEDICAL DRUGS THEFT: SOME CIVIL SERVANTS RICH - MPS

LOBAMBA – A lifestyle audit can unearth that some civil servants under the Ministry of Health are richer than they should be, according to Ndzingeni Member of Parliament Lutfo Dlamini.

The legislator submitted that the fortune amassed by the civil servants under the ministry was attributed to the persistent loss of drugs at the Central Medical Stores (CMS), an anomaly that had also been highlighted by the Auditor General (AG), Timothy Matsebula, in his recent report.

The Ministry of Health made its portfolio committee annual performance report presentation at the House of Assembly yesterday, where the issue of loss of drugs through distribution of same formed part of the discussions.
Matsebula revealed in the Forensic Investigation Proposal and Audit of Acquisition, Distribution, and Management of Pharmaceuticals report that drugs worth E151.6 million were missing and unaccounted for in public health facilities around the country. He said this might be caused by theft and misuse for personal benefits, leading to a public outcry on the shortage of the medicines.

Acquisition

The audit focused on the acquisition and distribution of medicines to public health facilities, including the Central Medical Stores (CMS), under the administration of the Ministry of Health and covered the 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years. “There is a report of the auditor general, who is empowered in terms of Section 207 of the Constitution, to deal and even surcharge anybody implicated in the mismanagement of public funds.

The minister should push the controlling officer to deal with this matter because the AG has made and presented his findings. This should be done promptly so that the auditor general is comfortable with what the controlling officer will say regarding the matter,” the MP said. Dlamini then suggested that Eswatini should go and benchmark the drone delivery system that had been adopted by African countries like Rwanda and Ghana.

For example, this mode of transport was being harnessed to transport vital medicines, blood tests and supplies in Rwanda, in a partnership that would facilitate care for the ill and the vulnerable at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to aviation-today, Californian start-up Zipline made the deliveries by drone, and the delivery system allowed medical staff across Rwanda to transport and process blood tests quickly and thereby keep a close eye on who may be at risk.

Manzini Region MP Busisiwe Mavimbela was the first to suggest that the ministry benchmarked with other countries on how they would efficiently manage the distribution of drugs and she also suggested that the CMS should be decentralised in all four regions of the country too, a move that she said could help government in properly managing the medication. Hhukwini MP Nkhanyeti Ngwenya, who is the Parliament Portfolio Committees’ Chair of Chairs, requested the ministry on what law the legislators could pass in Parliament to assist them in transforming the CMS into a parastatal so that they efficiently distributed the drugs.

Engage

“We can’t be addressing the same issue over and over again. The ministry should engage us on how we can assist them in terms of a piece of legislation so that this issue is dealt with,” he submitted. Nkwene MP Vulimpompi Nhleko said the issue of the drugs shortage was a serious concern in the sense that even healthcare workers were now operating pharmacies and taking advantage of the referrals to chemists by doctors to patients.

He made an example that there was one just a stone’s throw from the Hlatikhulu Government Hospital and it was servicing mostly the patients referred to pharmacies for medication. Nhleko said he was informed that the operator of the pharmacy was actually a doctor at the hospital.Making his recommendation through the report, AG Matsebula said the ministry should investigate the unaccounted for medicines, with the aim of recovering and reporting any unrecovered stock to the Losses Committee at the Ministry of Finance.

He said the ministry should have a system that monitored the medicines from ordering, receiving, stores until dispensary to patients and it should strengthen internal controls and implement monitoring controls to ensure that facilities adhered to regulations. “The ministry should evaluate the use of the Stock Record Cards, and design controls which will help mitigate the risk of misuse of medicines in the facilities,” said Matsebula in his recommendations.

Shortage

When responding to the concerns by the MPs, Minister Lizzie Nkosi said they had a plan to combat the loss and shortage of drugs in the country and they would present it to the ministry’s portfolio committee soon.She also mentioned that they also had a plan to implement the use of drones for the distribution of drugs as some of the MPs suggested and she mentioned that it would also be presented to the committee in due course.

Worth mentioning is that Ndzingeni MP Lutfo Dlamini mentioned that Eswatini should start manufacturing some of the medication locally, as was the case in countries like Lesotho, instead of procuring medical drugs that would soon be destroyed because they had expired.“The expiring of medicines is the oldest way of cheating a government. We need to change the way we do things, engage our partners and start manufacturing these drugs and medicine locally,” he said.

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