Kampala public health centres run out of drugs

Kampala

Health centres controlled by Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) have not had antibiotic drugs for the last three months, Daily Monitor has learnt.

The Makindye Division district medical officer, Dr Richard Walyomo, told this newspaper in an interview yesterday that while health centres in all the five divisions in Kampala lacked some medicines, his area was the worst hit.

“There are two systems of getting drugs. One is where we wait for the government to send us drugs, and the other is where we request for drugs from the National Medical Stores (NMS) depending on the funds they will have received from the government,” he said.

“But in this quarter (past three months) no funds were availed to NMS and the government did not send us any. For the case of Makindye, we only had one health centre, Kirundu, but recently we also got Kisugu. But we were still getting funds for one health centre, so this explains why we have been so much affected by the limited funds.”

Dr Walyomo explained that some of the medicines that are lacking in the health centres include antibiotics. “When a patient goes to any of the health centres with malaria, they are given full treatment because we have anti-malarial. We also have ARVs. But we are completely out of stock of antibiotics.”

The acting director of public health services and environment at KCCA, Dr Daniel Okello, said it has been caused by the meagre budget allocation. “For example, Kiswa Health Centre IV receives a minimum of 700 patients a day yet it is allocated a quarterly budget of Shs5 million,” Dr Okello said.

However, in an earlier interview with this newspaper, Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Asuman Lukwago said the Ministry of Finance is handling all health budgetary issues.

pahimbisibwe@ug.nationmedia.com