•Govt gets drug agency, seeks availability, accessibility
From Uchenna Inya, Abakaliki
Health facilities owned by Ebonyi State Government were in shambles. Personnel, drugs and infrastructure were seriously lacking until the present administration came on board and employed 195 health workers to solve the problem of manpower in the facilities to some extent.
After solving that problem, it was discovered that the health facilities were empty without drugs. The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Moses Ekuma told Daily Sun that health workers were going to work with their own drugs to administer to patients which forced government to establish an agency-Drug and Commodity Medical Management Agency (DCMMA), to ensure availability of drugs in all the health facilities across the state.
To strengthen the agency, the government set up a committee known as Drug Revolving Fund (DRF).
Inaugurating the committee, the commissioner noted that the issue of drug insecurity, non-affordability and shortage will be over with the establishment of the agency and the committee: “I am also happy that we have gotten to this stage of the programme because when this administration started, I went round the general hospitals and discovered there was no drug.
“What was happening was that health workers were coming to work with their own drugs. I said no, we cannot continue like that. There is no hospital without drugs, if you don’t have drugs, you don’t have hospital. What we did was to prepare a bill and sent to the House of Assembly which they passed and the governor signed it into law and we now have an agency-Drug and Commodity Medical Management Agency.
“This agency is in charge of procuring drugs. The law has made it compulsory for the agency to procure the drugs directly from manufacturing company, not from any roadside shops, they must procure directly from the manufacturing company. By so doing, we are sure of the quality of the drugs. The drug will be cheaper, more affordable to the people; it will also be made available to the patients. It is not after attending to a patient, the patient will go out to buy drugs.”
Director of Pharmaceutical Services in the state, Dr. Moses Okoro explained the essence of the committee was to ensure oversight of the drug management agency to ensure drug availability, accessibility and quality in the hospitals.
Okoro who is also Chairman of the Integrated Sustainable Health Supply System (ISHSS) Team in the state, identified lack of infrastructure and enough personnel as some of the challenges in the hospitals in the state that will confront the committee.
But he was upbeat that the challenges will not weigh them down: “The reason for the setting up of this committee is actually the reason for setting up the Drug Management Agency (DMA). Initially, we were having drug revolving funds but now it has a capacity of being an agency. It has been backed up by law.
“So, the functioning of the DMA is now dependent on the governance of this management committee. The management committee manages the activities of a drug management agency, it’s a kind of oversight function.
“Therefore, the function of this committee is to have oversight and make sure that the essence of having drug management agency is achieved and that essence is having drug availability, having drug accessibility, making sure that we have drug quality available to the citizens so that at the end of the day, we will have drug security which is sub-set of health security.”
Okoro acknowledged the efforts of the present government in employing some people, saying that it has taken off heavy burden on the committee: “So, what we are asking for is more employment of human resource because that is the challenge we have.
“We are happy to have Global Health Supply Chain Management Programme (GHSC) and they have been supporting this drug management agency and with the government coming in to help us in the area of employment, the issue will be sorted.”