DRUG SHORTAGE CONTINUES TO BITE
THAT our health system is in shambles and convulsing is no longer an issue of debate. It is a painful existential reality, albeit ignored by those with the responsibility to serve.
What is astounding, however is why nothing has been done to resolve the matter considering that, the shortage of medication leads to loss of life.
Little wonder the Ministry has been placed at the top of the corruption index.
It is even shocking that the leadership at the Ministry of Health is concerned by the dress of nursing staff when the real problem of drug shortage, equipment break down and downright incompetence have been allowed to persist.
We have close experience of this incompetence. Recently the journalism fraternity lost a member who fought a kidney ailment valiantly, sourcing medication from private sources because the health system could not provide.
The stark reality of drug shortages is pervasive and affects hospitals, health centres and clinics, the points of contact between the Government and the public.
It is not stretching the truth to say the Zambian health system has collapsed. How many people have faith in obtaining full treatment and medication from any government institution? Very few.
If a poll was conducted on the least trusted ministry, the Ministry of Health would win, hands down for hospitals and health facilities are only stocked with prescriptions.
Desperate patients are being sent home with prescriptions of medicines, which in most cases, they cannot ill afford. Most likely, such prescription papers are left lying in the homes as poor patients find other means of treatment, including going to traditional healers.
What is worrying now, is that the nation seems to have taken this drug shortage as a normal thing. Politicians have stopped talking about it in Parliament or elsewhere. Does it mean that people have stopped getting sick or dying? No.
Leaders find it convenient not to talk about drug shortage because it makes them uncomfortable to be questioned.
Why has government condoned this mismanagement of the country’s health system to the extent where an epileptic patient is sent home without medicine?
Yet not long ago, the Vice-President, Mutale Nalumango was on television, claiming that Levy Mwanawasa hospital had adequate medicines and medical supplies.
This particular patient was sent away from Levy Mwanawasa with nothing but a prescription for a very dangerous ailment. Shame on everyone trying to hide the inadequacies in our health systems.
It is time to come clean and ensure that the right thing is done.
For those in the Ministry of Health, Stop telling lies. There are no medicines in hospitals. That is a fact. Let us start from there.