By Nasratu Kargbo
The National Medical Supplies Agency has on the 16th June 2021 assured Sierra Leoneans of sufficient medical commodities to cater for hospitals and Peripheral Health Units across the country throughout the year.
The Managing Director of the National Medical Supplies Agency (NMSA), Dr. Lawrence Sandi explained that the mandate of NMSA is very specific “we are responsible for procurement, warehousing, distribution of drugs and medical supplies for all government institutions in the country”. He added that the Agency has focused more on the Free Health Care Initiative as well as other initiatives like HIV, TB and Malaria programmes and commodity management as a whole.
Addressing newsmen at one of its warehouses in the eastern part of Freetown, Dr. Sandi explained that the purpose of their engagement was for them to see firsthand the processes involved in getting the commodities in the right amount, right quality, and how the commodities are transported to the different districts.
“Government has done quite a lot to make ensure that drugs and medical supplies are readily available for deployment to the service delivery point, in order to cater for the need of the public”, he said.
Speaking on the procurement process, Dr. Sandi stated that for the Free Health Care, the procurement was initially done by DFID onto 2018 but that when the government of President Julius Maada Bio took over, they had to co-finance; wherein DFID and the government shared the expenses of procuring the drugs. However, he said there has never been a problem in terms of finance to procure the drugs.
“The stores are overwhelmed and full with supplies which will take us throughout the year to supply our different service delivery points,” he assured.
He went on to explain that NMSA has nine warehouses that cut across Western Area and that the biggest drug store is located at Ferry Junction. “It has about four thousand five hundred square meters of storage capacity, it is the biggest hub” he said.
He added: “For this quarter two distribution, we are sending USD 2,457 (two million four hundred and fifty-seven) dollars’ worth of commodities across the country just for the products.”
Despite the periodic supply of drugs, he said they do emergency supplies as well and replenish supplies in the facilities in case they have more patients than they anticipated.
To ensure that the drugs reach the right people and places, he said they do community engagement to let the people know of the availability of the drugs in the facilities so they could demand it when needed.
The Deputy Managing Director, Moses Batema said NMSA does its activities in three phases namely procurement, storage and distribution.
He explained that the products from DFID come through UNICEF and are directly delivered by them to the warehouse; NMSA also buys on behave of the government and directly takes them to the warehouse.
Touring through the different warehouses, Batema explained that in the Fawaz store there are two sets of commodities: Malaria commodities which are funded by the Global Fund and the Free Health Care commodities which are jointly procured by the government of Sierra Leone and DFID.
Speaking on the distribution process, he said “the first is the electronic process where we allocate commodities by quantity to each facility, the storekeeper uses that list to pick and pack for the specific location”. He added that the distribution is done in every quarter of the years and that the current distribution is for the second quarter “we have served over ten districts and we have six more to go”.
He said that the drugs are distributed to the district medical stores for allocation to all the hospitals and the Peripheral Health Units (PHUs) in the district.
NMSA is a government institution under the Ministry of Health that is charged with the responsibility to procure, store, and distribute drugs and medical supplies for all government institutions in Sierra Leone.
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online (18/06/21)
