Africa-Press – Uganda. The Health Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr Diana Atwine on Monday afternoon toured the new National Medical Stores’ state-of-the-art pharmaceuticals warehouse in Kajjansi off Entebbe road.
“We inspected the construction site for the new Medicines and Vaccines Warehouse that will also house offices for NMS in Kajjansi,” said Dr Atwine.
She said the facility is expected to be completed and operational by end of June this year.
NMS’ mandate is to procure, warehouse, and distribute essential medicines and medical supplies, primarily to government health facilities.
The warehouse is expected to increase bulk store capacity area from the current 8,000 pallet locations in the existing premises to a minimum of 30,000 pallet locations.
The facility will also increase cold chain capacity to a maximum net storage volume of 2,500m3 purpose-built as a drive-in cold room (DICR).
“One of our main objectives is to consolidate, centralize and operate NMS services and infrastructure in one modern, purpose-built and efficient building, with a minimum sixty-year lifespan, on the specified site,” said NMS General Manager Moses Kamabare at a recent event.
The facility will as well have a medical gas plant.
“We now want to secure the future of oxygen in Uganda with a new plant capable of producing 100 cylinders per day,” he added.
Mr Kamabare said the gas will be supplied mainly to public hospitals across Uganda but private facilities will be considered too.
Medicine availability across the country currently stands at 85 per cent with a target of reaching 90 per cent within the next 1-2 years.
NMS recently hired clerks to follow up on drugs from the districts up to the rural health facilities under what is known as the last-mile delivery model.
In the year 2017/2018, NMS achieved a higher than the target score of 90 per cent stock availability for Essential Medicines and 86 per cent for Tracer items against a target of 75 per cent set by the Ministry of Health.
