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$4B to be spent on pharmaceuticals

Aug 02, 2009 News

By Fareeza Haniff

The Ministry of Health will be spending some $4 billion in the supply of medicines and drugs for this year.

This is according to Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, who noted that of that sum of money, $2.8 billion will be spent by the National Government while the remaining $1.5 billion will be spent through various international partners of the Ministry of Health.

According to the Health Minister, in the year 2000, the health sector spent just over $500 million on the procurement of medicines.

Meanwhile, a US$5 million contract was signed between the Ministry of Health and Bassu and Sons Construction Company for the establishment of a new warehouse to store drugs and medicine. The new warehouse will be constructed at the Eccles Industrial Site, East Bank Demerara and construction is expected to take approximately ten months.

At the signing ceremony of the contract which took place in the boardroom of the Supply Chain Management Services (SCMS) on High Street, Kingston, Georgetown, Minister Ramsammy said the establishment of the new warehouse comes through the collaboration of a number of agencies, which includes the US PEPFAR programme, through the collaboration with SCMS, the Global Fund, the World Bank, the IDB and the Guyana Government.

“The health sector had an inadequate ware house, in the sense that it was not large enough and it was inappropriate for the storage of medicines and vaccines. That problem was recognised early as our donors come aboard to help us deliver a better service and as the government invested more money, the problem became more, not just acute, but it became a chronic problem,” Minister Ramsammy said.

He explained that the Ministry is not only looking at the physical space of the warehouse, as it needs to meet the demands of the Health Ministry. “It will have all of the different kind of needs, such as refrigerated needs and it would have the computerised information system.”

Currently, the Health Ministry is renting a warehouse in Farm on the East Bank Demerara. This warehouse, he said is computerised to increase accountability in the system.

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