Africa-Press – Tanzania. PUBLIC hospitals will from next July onwards adopt a performance scorecard system for their pharmacists as the government moves to seal leakages causing loss of medicines due to inefficiency and theft.
Minister of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Dr Dorothy Gwajima, noted on Thursday that the sectoral performance score cards are meant to address the loss of billions of shillings spent on buying drugs. This followed a recent study by a special team formed by the ministry to conduct an audit on medicine procurement chain in public hospitals.
So far, the team has conducted an audit in Dodoma and Morogoro regions, where it found out loss of drugs worth billions of shillings. Some of the issues which caused the loss were, among others, drugs being kept in hospitals until their expiry dates instead of being given to patients, drugs received with no records as well as medicines reaching the medicine departments but not reaching patients.
According to Dr Gwajima, the weaknesses identified during the study will be used as indicators for the performance score cards for pharmacists in government hospitals.
“We want you to go and address loopholes causing loss of drugs. Be efficient and adhere to your ethical conduct to build a good image and branding yourself for future opportunities,” he counseled the pharmacists when he opened the annual general meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society of Tanzania (PST) held in Dar es Salaam.
The two-day annual general meeting, which started yesterday, among other things will discuss issues in the pharmaceutical industry and elect new leaders.
This year’s general meeting was themed: ‘pharmaceutical personnel key to availability of quality medicines in Tanzania.’ But, Dr Gwajima challenged the meeting to discuss and come out with resolutions regarding theft of drugs by some dishonest pharmacists in hospitals.
She said the PST has a big role to help the government achieve its intended objectives in improving availability of drugs in the country. Dr Gwajima tasked the Pharmacy Council of Tanzania (PCT) to take action against indisciplined pharmacists who go against ethics and tarnish the image of the profession.
On his part, Chief Pharmacist in the ministry, Daudi Msasi raised the alarm over operation of pharmacies in communities, saying the latter are blamed for selling substandard drugs to consumers. Mr Msasi told the pharmacists that they were entrusted to protect the health of the people, thus they should play their role by supervising those pharmacies.
Earlier, Chairman of the board of trustees of PST, Prof Omary Minzi, also condemned dishonest pharmacists who steal medicines in hospitals. “Few of you make all of to be negatively perceived. I ask pharmacists to serve professionally,” he stated.
On the other hand, the PST asked the government to recruit more pharmacists for the regional and district hospitals to enable more efficiency. However, the society commended the government’s efforts to boost the budget for buying medicines, which improves availability of essential drugs in the hospitals.
The general meeting was attended by clinical pharmacists, industrial pharmacists, community pharmacists, pharmacists from industries, research institutions and regulatory bodies.
