For more than a week now lawmakers in Parliament have been haggling in an on and off debate on the suffering of patients stranded in public hospitals due to shortage of medicine.
The crux of the matter, it is explained, is the government’s failure to pay over 90bn/- it owes the Medical Supplies Department (MSD).
To redress this situation, some of the MPs last week went to the extent of proposing that the current Bunge sessions be postponed and the money accruing from their allowances, well to the tune of 100m/- to each, daily, be channelled to buy medicines for the needy patients.
Sensing that their clamours were yet to be heard, on Monday, they came up a bit louder, demanding government’s emergency plan to be put in place to save Tanzanians suffering and dying due to the shortage of medicines in hospitals.
This showdown however has not been in the failure to supply medicines alone.
Constructions of some buildings meant to boost the state of health delivery in the country have often gone unfinished for years.
Irked by the situation, MPs told the august House on yesterday that the leading regional hospital in the designated capital of Dodoma, needs only 600m/- to finalise construction of a maternal and child health building that has remained dormant for at least eight years.
Yet people have always been denied the services that would have been offered by such a facility were it to be completed on time.
Well such are some of the burgeoning challenges that some of our people have to grapple with because of the manner in which we manage our institutions.
But one may ask, if a leading public hospital like Muhimbili National Hospital in the county’s blossoming commercial hub and a regional hospital in the state’s designated capital would go without the basic health needs like medicines, beds and equipment, then how could the situation in dispensaries and health centres in the villages look like?
We are compelled to ask such difficult questions particularly when keeping in mind that 80 per cent of Tanzanians live in rural areas where medical facilities are nonexistent and where they exist, they have always gone without medical supplies.
Apparently, the problem that the parliament, government and MSD are haggling about is not that medicines are not available in country.
They are galore. The state run distributor, Medical Store Department (MSD) has only refused to release them on grounds that the government should pay 90bn/- owed to the former. The argument is fecund and principled given the prevailing market circumstances.
There is no way out, but the government should pay. But while it is aware of this it has only embarked on half-baked measures which may in the final analysis ruin the very rationale of medicine supplies by MSD.
Bewilderment come to the reign when the same hospitals that lack medicines, staff and even beds are the very ones told by the government to give up the little revenue they garner from cost sharing.
The question is all arguments put forward, who should therefore rescue the patients from this quixotic predicament?
It looks as if the way the government is taking up this matter, there no ready solutions to it at the moment. But shall we be made to believe that truly there are no solutions to this problem?
We believe there are. The government should immediately source for money and pay the debt to have the patients secure medical supplies. This should not be allowed to take long.
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