Africa-Press – Tanzania. MINISTER for Health, Gender, Elderly and Children, Dr Dorothy Gwajima, has pledged that all health centres will be equipped with modern diagnostic devices by January next year in continued efforts to improve health service delivery in the country.
Dr Gwajima gave the assurance in Dar es Salaam, yesterday when inspected some of such machines given by the Medical Stores Department (MSD) to the Mwananyamala Regional Referral Hospital.
The handed over machines included a chemistry analyzer, hematology analyzer, full blood picture machines and Urinalysis analyzer.
“It is expected that by December this year, the distribution of those machines to all health centres will be completed and thus by next January, each centre will start to use them. The government will issue a statement upon completion of the exercise of supplying them,” Dr Gwajima noted.
She said the distribution of those machines was a result of a new agreement with the MSD and suppliers, the agreement which enabled acquisition of the machines at affordable prices because of sidelining middlemen during procurement.
The minister further informed that all is set for the Parliament to discuss the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) bill during its sitting in November after a finalisation of the drafting process.
Dr Gwajima said the bill was scheduled to be tabled during the just ended sitting but it was later shelved because of incomplete procedures.
The minister revealed that already 140bn/- has been set aside by the ministry to serve the needy on the much awaited universal health coverage adding that the MSD was complementing the initiatives.
“This is a programme that the government has been working on for a long time and now it has come to the final as a ministry we have finished everything and we will table the bill in the next parliament sitting,” she said.
The government strives to expand health insurance coverage to at least 50 -percent in the efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
In another development, the MSD has introduced an initiative to directly link hospitals with manufacturers of medical supplies, so that they could negotiate prices in efforts to make hospitals across the country purchase major health equipment and drugs at a lower price.
“We have started with local manufacturers, we believe this will help as the government is now constructing hospitals and also ready to roll out the universal health coverage,” said MSD Director General Maj General Dr Gabriel Mhidize.
He said the new programme aims at getting rid of middle-men who at times inflate prices giving an example of a hematology analysis machine which is bought at 50m/- but Mwananyamala has bought it at 14m/- only.
