The Health Ministry had denied the reported shortage of Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for HIV patients in Ghana.
Public Relations Officer of the Ministry, Tony Goodman dismissed the report saying, “it’s not true that we don’t have Antiretroviral drugs in the country.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”lKbUiZ3OA8tqvGMFc2K7zWNR9X6rcKM7″]Persons living with HIV in Ghana are complaining over the two-months “severe shortage” of the medicine.
According to them, all efforts to get the authorities to rectify the problem have yielded no results and have thus appealed to the government to urgently supply them with the ARV since their lives depend on it.
Goodman on the Citi Breakfast Show insisted that the Ministry has the medicine in stock.
“As I speak to you, we have enough. USAID has contracted a private company to also do some distribution so that most facilities across the country will have medication,” he said.
He attributed the agitations from the patients to the Ministry’s decision to reduce their ration from two to three months to two weeks to one month.
The Health Ministry’s PRO explained that “in the past, we were giving two to three months stock to the various facilities or service delivery point but we decided to give two weeks to one month to the various facilities and that is what caused some of those agitations. We got information that they were not happy with the number we gave them.”
According to him, the Ministry took that decision because, “all over the world, HIV drugs do not go to the service delivery areas. They don’t give three or two months but in Ghana because we have transportation issues and our supply chain system is not that effective…”
“We don’t want them to come to Accra for the medication. We want to go to them so that it will be swift and quick for them,” he added.
Medical Stores fire to blame
Tony Goodman admitted that the destruction of the Tema Central Medical Stores destroyed millions of medical supplies including Antiretroviral drugs and that led to the shortage of the medicine.
But he quickly added that the Ministry presently has enough stock which has been distributed to the various hospitals and service delivery points.
He said after the fire, the government released an amount of GHC 25 million to procure medication and “we are taking delivery of enough medication” for onward distribution.
Goodman mentioned that his outfit is yet to take full delivery of the consignment they requested but “they are coming in bits and we don’t want to run out of stock…and we are also procuring some locally.”
ARV can’t be procured locally
The Health Ministry indicated that although some local pharmaceutical companies are producing the ARV, government cannot purchase the medicine from them.
He explained that the funding used to procure Antiretroviral is a global fund money “and if you are using global fund money to procure medication, wherever you are procuring from should be WHO pre-qualified institution.”
“In Ghana, we don’t have one but we are using our local resources to procure locally – so that is in the offing,” he added.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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