Hospital runs low on drugs

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THE Sir Joseph Nombri Memorial Kundiawa hospital in Chimbu has been using funds from its trust account to buy medicines over the last three months, an official says.
There is now a shortage of medical supplies at the hospital and the health and finance departments are being urged to work together to see that the monthly operational funding for hospitals throughout the country is released on time.
“For us at Sir Joseph Nombri Memorial Hospital, shortages of medical supplies is not a new thing or a new issue,” The hospital’s chief executive, Dr Harry Poka, said yesterday.
“The problem has been there for some three to four years back and we are used to these situation and we always manage that but the situation we are faced with right now is different.
“In the past years, it is a bit easy to manage the shortage in medical supplies because we receive our monthly operational grants from the national government.”
Poka said the money is then used to purchase medical supplies from independent distributors and suppliers.
“So every hospital is entitled to various amounts of operational grants,  depending on their budgets and operations.
“But for this year, we haven’t received that money for the last three months and it’s going into the fourth month now.”
“We are using money from the hospital trust account to purchase medicines from private suppliers.”
Attempts to get comments from the health department yesterday were unsuccessful.