Ugee

Salaries of 10 medical workers have been unpaid, accusing them of stealing malaria drugs in order to recover the loss.

It was discovered that Coartem worth over sh13m was missing from 10 public health centres in Mbarara District

“Last year, there were cases of missing Coartem drugs and the culprits were made to pay back through salary deductions,” the district secretary for social services, Fred Canary Mubangizi, disclosed at a council meeting.“Nine of them have fully paid back and the tenth person is yet to complete (payment).”
He released the names of the medical assistants, nurses and midwives who were in charge of the health units.Some of the missing medicines were recovered from drug shops owned by the perpetrators, while others were on sale in grocery stores.
When quizzed by the probe team to explain why the drugs were not corresponding with the malaria patients in the books, one of the medical officers said his pharmacist had erroneously given out Coartem to gonorrhoea patients.
Asked why the matter was not reported to the ministry of health headquarters, Dr. Amooti Kaguna, the district Director of Health Services, said: “We are working under a decentralised health system, where these health workers report to the district.”
The Mbarara district chairperson, Wilberforce Yaguma, said any person found guilty or having misused public funds would have to refund it before the case is forwarded to the Police for possible prosecution.
State Minister for Health Richard Nduhura last week announced that all government drugs would be labelled, starting from June, to stop theft in government hospitals and health centres.
“Whoever is found selling a tablet or bottle of medicine labelled UG will have a task to explain how they got it,” he warned when addressing the Bushenyi district council meeting.
“The ministry releases drugs to hospitals but before two weeks elapse, some hospitals run out of drugs. Where do they go?”
Over 14,000 doses of Coartem were recently recovered from Congo and South Sudan, according to Emmy Kakkuru, an official attached to the monitoring department of the ministry of health
Nduhura said the ministry has been handling 16 cases of drug thefts, six of which have led to convictions.
Health minister Stephen Mallinga earlier this year told Parliament that half of all the drugs dispatched to the districts were being diverted.

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