Health Minister assures better management of pharmaceuticals

Apr 18, 2013 News

“I inherited that,” said Minister of Health Dr. Bheri Ramsaran as he alluded to moves by the Health Ministry in the past to pay the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation to store its (Health Ministry) drugs.
However the Minister insisted last evening that this practice is expected to be a thing of the past following the March 8, 2013 commissioning of the Ministry’s bond at Diamond, East Bank Demerara.
The new bond, the Minister said, is a fairly modern facility and will offer the capacity to accommodate its entire stock of drugs and medical supply that would have been purchased. He was optimistic that this move, along with other measures such as the introduction of the National Treatment Guidelines.
These guidelines will see doctors and other practitioners ordering in a particular fashion since according to him there have been continuous complaints that “sometimes doctors deviate from a particular pattern. This would cause a scamper to procure drugs to suit a particular taste and that could lead to some issues with inventory.”
With the new bond in place the Minister said that the Health Ministry will be able to stave off the instances in the past when drugs would have expired while in stock.
He further explained that the state of affairs that obtained in the past would have seen drugs being ordered in one instance and stored in a bond which although was physically owned by the New GPC, was “as I understood, under the control of the Ministry of Health. So in other words the products there were no longer the property of the New GPC.”
He explained that the challenge that had confronted the Ministry during that time was in fact a matter of management of resources.
He said that he had repeatedly made reference to the importance of economy of savings “because I am convinced if we manage that major part of inventory we would avoid some of the embarrassment (as contained in the Auditor General Reports) although we can comment on that because sometimes those sums look huge.
Based on the Auditor General’s Report substantial amounts of the Ministry of Health’s drugs had expired while stored in the New GPC’s bonds.
Minister Ramsaran admitted last evening that there is a dire need for the Health Ministry to better manage its resources regardless of “whose bond it is in…”
The Health Minister’s extensive deliberation were channeled from a line of questions from A Partnership of National Unity (APNU’)’s point man on Finance, Carl Greenidge, when the consideration of the 2013 national budgetary allocation continued.
Greenidge was at the time tasked with thoroughly interrogating the Minister of plans for the $1.8 billion allocated for the procurement of drugs and medical supplies for the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
He, in questioning the Minister, also turned his attention to the fact that in the past, total upfront payments were made to the New GPC at the beginning of the year or soon after the reading of the national budget for the storage of drugs was indicative of some of the managerial problems faced by the Ministry.
But according to Minister Ramsaran with moves such as the introduction of the national treatment guidelines coupled with regular updating along with the publishing and upgrading of the National Essential Drug list and continued training “hopefully we will avoid some degree of loss of drugs…”
Leader of the Alliance for Change, Khemraj Ramjattan, also was keen on targeting the drugs and medical supplies for the GPHC and sought to question whether the process of single sourcing or competitive bidding would be used during procurement.
To this, the Minister assured that competitive bidding would be used.

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Health Minister assures better management of pharmaceuticals

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