Govt vaccinates 2,300 against yellow fever

At least 2,300 residents of Arua District have been vaccinated against yellow fever in the just concluded vaccination exercise by the National Medical Stores (NMS).
Dr Paul Bishop Drileba,  the district health officer, called for the extension of the exercise due to the high turn up.

“We appreciate this gesture and our request to NMS is to increase the doses going forward. It is clear that the people appreciated this service. However, for NMS to fully vaccinate the people of Arua, we need like 10,000 doses, and the campaign should run for five days,”  Dr Drileba said on Tuesday.
Mr James Odong, the NMS spokesperson, said the exercise is a token of commitment to consistently contribute towards positive social development and better quality of life of Ugandans.

“We have noted the demand for the vaccine is high in Arua and we commit to continue enabling you and the entire country access quality medicines and vaccines as is your right. We urge you to also visit any health centre where you can also access these vaccines,” he said.
Yellow fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Some of the symptoms include fever and headache.

New system
Meanwhile, NMS together with partners are set to roll out the customer self-services portal to government health centre IVs and hospitals.
The portal will be used for ordering health commodities and improve visibility of commodity stock information.

While visiting new NMS storage facilities in Kajjansi, Kampala, MPs called for plugging loopholes exploited by officials at the district and health centre levels to steal government drugs. 
The NMS is  also implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning,  a digitised system to ensure effective tracking of  the supplies to the final users.