Morobe health in trouble as medicine supplies dry up

By PISAI GUMAR
MOROBE is facing double trouble in its health services.
Apart from the shortage of medicines, the province does not have a reliable service to deliver medicines to health centres.
Caretaker health adviser Jack Aita said that the situation was affecting patients and health workers in the province.
Aita said that in some cases, patients walked long distances to health centres only to be told that there was no medicine.
“The patients then attack health workers and threaten to burn the facilities and as a result health workers leave the health facilities in fear for their lives and close health services,” he said.
“Is worse when patients, especially children and pregnant mothers, are forced to walk to the health centres.”
Morobe has 367 aid posts, 52 health centres and three hospitals.
“Someone within the National Department of Health (NDOH) and the government must come out and tell us the truth about the chronic shortage of medicines and how the logistics of delivering medicines to health facilities is working in the country,” Aita said.
“Mid-last year, the NDOH and the government announced that they had purchased the medicines but here at Lae Area Medical Store, there are inadequate supplies. We are spending again to buy important drugs from pharmacies which are very costly.”
Aita said that the K50 million allocated by the government for medicines was “peanuts” compared to the daily needs of people in the country.