Health and Social Services Executive Director, Ben Nangombe has said the public health sector is being hamstrung by the procurement systems that often result in delays in the acquisition of medical and clinical supplies.

Speaking at a media briefing here on Sunday, Nangombe said the ministry often resorted to emergency procurement, which he said was too costly.

He said the Central Medical Stores (CMS) has a complementary list of 1 250 active pharmaceutical and clinical supplies, of which only ARV products are on long-term contracts.

“This means the majority of CMS products are procured via buy-out or emergency procurement. This process is not reliable as suppliers are not tied to a fixed contract and they are more likely to cancel orders,” he said.

Nangombe said the current threshold of N.dollars 25 million for pharmaceutical and clinical supplies is also not enough, which forces CMS to procure in small lots that are used up before the next replenishment cycle.

To remedy the situation, Nangombe said the ministry is looking to increase the threshold or establish a dedicated entity to deal with health procurement.

“For that to happen, certain measures are being taken by the Public Procurement Unit to look at our systems and see whether the practices and modalities we have in place will support that kind of intervention,” he said.

The health ministry is also looking to expand the markets where it can source cheaper pharmaceutical and clinical products.

“We are looking at other markets; for a long time the Namibia Medicines Regulatory Council has had alignment with a limited number of stringent regulatory authorities in the world. But we also know that we have potential manufacturers of pharmaceuticals in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. We visited Egypt not too long ago, they have more than 134 pharmaceutical manufacturers,” the ED said.

The government official added that the ministry seeks to align with the Egyptian Drug Authority to be able to procure medicine and that they have approached the medicines council to draft a memorandum of understanding to that effect.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency