Murang’a County government has signed a pact with a Catholic owned medical supplier to boost access of drugs in local health facilities.
On Monday, County Executive Committee (CEC) Member for Health Dr. Fredrick Mbugua said they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (MEDS) so as to compliment the drugs they get from KEMSA.
Dr. Mbugua said to improve accessibility to quality health care, the partnership with MEDS would fill in the gaps where KEMSA is not able to supply what is needed.
“KEMSA does not supply all the commodities that we require, so once in a while we will need to onboard MEDS to supply and fill in the gaps that KEMSA is not able to handle,” said Mbugua.
Mbugua said the partnership would boost the availability of drugs and other commodities in all the health faculties in the county.
“MEDS is a faith based organization that offers robust and resilient supply chain services which oversees the procurement, product identification, warehousing, logistics and distribution of health commodities and technologies,” he said.
He said that the county has recently spent Sh40 million to purchase a consignment of drugs and other medical commodities from KEMSA noting that they would be distributed to all health facilities as required.
“This is an exercise we are planning to be doing every three months to make sure our health facilities are fully supplied with the drugs and commodities that they require at all times,” said Mbugua after receiving a consignment of drugs from KEMSA at the county headquarter offices.
He divulged that health workers from all the nine sub counties were to receive their consignments, which they would distribute to their health facilities.
“We have 157 health facilities in the county and we are expecting all of them will benefit from these consignments,” he added.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mbugua applauded the Department of Health for raising Sh360 million out of Sh1 billion that the county has raised from its own source revenue for the financial year 2023-2024.
He noted that this accounted for about one third of the total own source revenue that the county has collected and that the money has enabled and facilitated the department to serve the people better.
“With the revenue we have collected, we are now able to buy what our hospitals need and sustain this kind of purchases every three months to keep our health department running efficiently and effectively,” he said.
Mbugua lauded the initiative of Governor Irungu Kang’ata of automating services at the medical facilities.
The automation is said to have increased revenue collected from the health facilities and streamlined procurement and distribution of drugs to all 157 health facilities in the county.
By Anita Omwenga and Purity Mugo
