Africa-Press – Botswana. The Botswana government says progress has been made in getting medicines to different parts of the country. This follows President Duma Boko’s declaration of the State of Public Health Emergency, 2 weeks ago.
This followed reports of shortage of medicines and medical equipment in hospitals and clinics. Boko attributed that to service providers’ alleged corrupt activities, which saw government being charged at inflated prices for medicines and medical equipment.
A fund has been set up to attract local and international investors to invest in the country’s health system, with a view of securing at least BWP 5b, an equivalent of R6b.
Medical supplies have been dispatched to different parts of the landlocked country of Botswana.
“Government took swift and strategic action to make sure that the public is provided with those critical medicines and medical commodities from the capital city to the furthest part of this country. The likes of Maung, towards the border of Zimbabwe and the border of Namibia, medicine and medical commodities have already arrived. They were in Kasane, and the situation can be said to be stabilising. There wasn’t any medical commodity or medicine that was missing in Kasane,” says Press Secretary of the Botswana Presidency, Emang Mutapati.
Mutapati says more supplies have been procured from international suppliers.
“They secured 35 tonnes of medicines and medical commodities from IDA suppliers. Medicine suppliers are based in the Netherlands, but their warehouse is in the UAE. And that is 85 lines of critical and life savings medicines that are coming to Botswana,” he adds.
Managing Director of Botswana Development Corporation, Oteng Keabetswe, says the inflation of prices by local suppliers is alleged to have plunged the country into the health-care crisis
“We reached out to the local supply community to say ”quote” for this six months of supply. I think the quote came slightly above R700m. We went ahead and sent the same list to international aggregators, and on average we came to about BWP 80m. This is really about BWP 600m difference. And in times where liquidity is not really available, we need to actually contribute to that service delivery to our people,” says Keabetswe.
The Botswana government says it is now in the process of securing BWP 5b, which is equivalent to R6m, to address these challenges.
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