Medical kits ready for delivery, Kase says

MEDICAL kits supplied by Borneo Pacific Pharmaceuticals Ltd are ready to be distributed to more than 2,000 health centres and aid posts throughout the country, Health secretary Pascoe Kase says.
During a ceremony to handover the medical kits to the Health Department yesterday, Kase said he was confident the medicine shortage issue would be sorted because the kits would be delivered to health facilities over the next six weeks.
He said the kits would be dispatched to seven locations around the country and four logistical companies had been tasked to deliver the kits.
South Pacific Pharmaceutical Distributors Ltd would distribute for the Highlands, LD logistics for Mamose, L&Z Enterprise Ltd for Southern and Telemu No.16 Ltd for the New Guinea Islands.
Kase said for routine medicine, health facilities were required
to place their orders on time, however, for the kits, orders were not needed.
He said the distribution of the first round of supplies would stop in the first week of November.
Kase said each supply would be able to last between three to six months, which meant that adequate stock of medicine would be available in the facilities until the next round of distribution.
In some facilities, he said there were early shortages because of the high utilisation by the population and in such situations options were available for them to make special orders at the area medical stores (AMS)
Kase said local health authorities would know their AMS.
He said if the rate of people coming to the health facilities was normal and medicine were still running out quickly then something was wrong at that level.
He said the unavailability of medicine was due to many factors, including the procurement
process, non-payment of dues, late delivery of medicine and stealing of medicines which he would focus on.