National News

Councils for 50% drug budget management

While the Ministry of Health has for long refused to give local councils greater control of their drug budgets by increasing contingency rate from 10 to 50 percent, the Malawi Local Government Authority (Malga) insists the increase is the only way to go.

The reason, according to Malga executive director Hadrod Mkandawire, is that the Central Medical Stores Trust (CMST), where health facilities are supposed to buy most of the drugs, does not have readily available stock of the required drugs all the time.

Some critical drugs at a hospital pharmacy. | Nation

Currently, local authorities are only allowed to access 10 percent to procure medicines and drugs from other supplies as CMST gets 90 percent of the drug budget.

Speaking on the sidelines of a pre-budget consultation meeting in Mzuzu on Tuesday, Mkandawire said the 10 percent devolved so far has proved to be instrumental in improving the health service delivery, but was not adequate.

He said: “Current policy is that government controls 90 percent of that drug budget, in the sense that while a budget line can be allocated to a particular district, those councils do not control the funds, but the National Local Government Finance Committee.

“Sole supplier for the 90 percent is CMST, but the CMST is not well resourced all the time. Once the CMST has run out of stock, despite that a council has the drug budget, they cannot procure; hence, the need to increase the percentage so that they look for alternatives.”

During a Malga facilitated high-level engagement between health service managers from local councils and national actors in November last year, the Ministry of Health insisted on clinging to the 90 percent.

The ministry’s director of health sector and intergovernmental coordination Amon Nkhata said the 10 percent contingency was based on scientific parameters and cannot just be changed.

“The focus should be on capitalising CMST to be able to supply without interruptions,” he said.

Last November, the trust said it was considering venturing into local production of medical drugs and ease drug shortages.

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