PESHAWAR: Health department has released about Rs1 billion for purchase of essential medicines for primary and secondary healthcare facilities in the province under decentralised procurement system at the district level.

According to a notification issued here on Wednesday, the department has released a total of Rs917.16,251 million to ensure availability of lifesaving medicines in basic and district health facilities. Of the amount, Rs811.95,472 million is meant for settled districts and Rs105.20779 million for hospitals in merged districts.

The notification issued by the director-general health services Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dr Mohammad Saleem Khan, has asked medical superintendents of the hospitals to start purchasing process before June 27. The medicines should be procured from the list approved by the medicine coordination cell (MCC) of the department. “Intimate the department about the completion of the process,” it said.

The funds, it said, were meant for the healthcare facilities in settled and merged districts for timely provision and uninterrupted availability of medicines across the province. It said that the amount would enable health facilities to acquire stock of medicines to cope with the need of drugs for at least three to four months.

Relevant officials warned against utilising the amount for clearing liabilities

The notification said that the funds should be utilised exclusively for procurement of fresh purchase of essential medicines and must not be utilised for clearance of previous liability of medicines or any other stuff. All the medical superintendents of hospitals and district health officers (DHOs) have been instructed to comply with the directions and share scanned copies of supply orders with directorate-general health services (DGHS) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Officials, meanwhile, told Dawn that some two months ago government had purchased drugs worth Rs5 billion for public sector hospitals in the province. The same had been procured by DGHS directly and then supplied to health facilities that caused many issues in the districts, they said.

They said that district health facilities wanted to purchase drugs as per their own needs but DGHS went ahead with the whole process of procurement without taking into consideration the needs of local hospitals. As per law, MCC is approving authority for recommending drugs to hospitals and districts were required to purchase the same at their own from the list.

“The authorisation of local hospitals to purchase drugs also helps them to make the process fast as opposed to the centralised procurement, which consumes more time because it acquires drugs for the entire province,” said officials. They said that owing to centralised purchase system, the district often exhausted stock because of lesser supplies of certain medicines from DGHS.

They said that in the past, DHOs would argue that they required medicines as per their needs but they were supplied other drugs that were not needed in the district. “Also, there are lesser chances of using illegal means at district level while at DGHS billions of rupees are involved in purchase of drugs against million at district level,” they added.

They said that system of drug procurement had long been decentralised as it enabled districts to get drugs, which were mostly used. For instance, many districts required anti-snake venom and anti-rabies vaccine because of snake and dog bites.

Often the districts complained of running out of some essential medicines because of centralised purchase system but now things would be streamlined as they would get stock of medicines in line with their needs.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2024