Africa-Press – Botswana. Central Medical Stores (CMS) and BotswanaPost have been urged to speed up dispatch of medicines to different health facilities.
Speaking during a tour to CMS on Thursday, the Assistant minister of health, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe urged the two entities to devise strategies for timely and efficient access to medication by the public.
He acknowledged the recent shortage of essential medicines and commodities, therefore he reminded the two entities that they were duty bound to save the lives of Batswana by delivering medicines.
Mr Lelatisitswe urged them to ensure availability of medicines and commodities, especially now that Botswana had received three large consignments from Canada, India and the Netherlands in the past two weeks.
“Liaise with Air Botswana, Botswana Railways, pull up BDF vehicles, whatever manpower you need, pull it up, work in shifts to be able to assist so that medicines arrive on time,” he stressed.
For his part, the General Manager, CMS Warehousing, Mr Herman Ssemakula said the delay was caused by the processes the medicines and commodities have to go through after arriving in the country.
“If medicines are wrongly prescribed, taken incorrectly or are of poor quality, they can cause serious harm to patients,” said Mr Ssemakula.
He also pointed out that CMS had detailed processes that entailed sorting, checking quality, expiry dates medicines and ensuring that they were not mixed up, adding that they were then captured into the system, before being dispatched to different DHMTs.
He said they were working tirelessly to speed up the process, but at the same time avoid to harm to patients.
Mr Ssemakula nevertheless said they had since delivered essential medicines to Nyangabgwe Referral hospital in Francistown.
For More News And Analysis About Botswana Follow Africa-Press
