Uganda launches new approach to improve access to essential medication

Ritah Sanyu wailed when a private clinic attendant asked her to raise Shs12,000 for the required malaria treatment prescribed for her critically ill son. She had just left a public health centre where the son was examined and referred to Mulago Referral Hospital because the centre was short of essential drugs.

Considering the distance to Mulago and the condition of her three year-old boy, Sanyu opted to visit a nearby clinic to buy the drugs. She had only Shs3,000 while a full dose was going at Shs12,000. “I can’t raise that money, yet the condition of my son is worsening. I presume the situation has deteriorated because he (son) has not got proper medication since falling sick. I’m about to give up,” Sanyu, a resident of Nabweru said, as she wiped tears off her face.

Sanyu is one of the many despondent people whose children often fall sick of common disease such as malaria and fail to afford proper medication because drugs are always out of stock in public health centres and expensive in private health institutions.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health indicate that approximately 40 to 60 per cent of Ugandans visit private health institutions when they fall sick. But since drugs in the private sector are expensive, many of the patients continue to go without medicine.

Mr Martin Oteba, Assistant Commissioner, Health Services in charge of pharmaceuticals at the Ministry Health, says the absence of essential medicines which ought to be available in public health centres is due to lack of transparency and accountability.

However, the Ministry of Health, the private sector and civil society organisations have initiated an alliance dubbed -the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA)-Uganda Chapter, to improve access and affordability of essential medicines through the principal of transparency and accountability.

The pilot project is funded by UK Department for International Development and with active participation of the World Health Organisation and World Bank. “The purpose of this coalition is to improve trends in availability and affordability of all essential drugs, particularly Artemether-Lumefantrine, first line anti malarial drugs,” Mr Oteba, who is also the co-chairperson of MeTA Council, says.

According to the official, MeTA would bring together stakeholders both at national and international levels to find ways of improving information flow and increase transparency and accountability in selection, regulation, procurement, sale, distribution and use of medicines in the country as well as in other developing countries.

Experts from MeTA say the country should be in position to offer treatment of common diseases to every citizen. According to National Bureau of Statistics 85 per cent of the Uganda population lives in rural area and majority of them often fail to access drugs because they are either expensive or scarce. “It is this imbalance that has made it necessary to initiate a global movement to see how the trend can be changed. The rural poor should have equal access to drugs,” Mr Oteba explains.