Children Believe, a non-governmental organization operating in Northern Ghana, has donated a significant quantity of medicines to the Northern Regional Medical Stores.
The donation, funded by the Canadian government under the CHANGE Project, aims to improve nutrition for the poor and most marginalized in society, with special attention on women, adolescent girls, and children in Ghana.
This donation is expected to benefit close to 90,000 individuals across the Northern, Upper East, and Savannah regions, who are all supplied by the Northern region medical stores.
In her handing-over statement, Esenam Kavi De Souza, Country Director of Children Believe, emphasised the importance of making these medications available to patients through the health insurance system.
She urged the medical stores to use the returns to build the medical fund to help boost service delivery.
“We want to encourage you as we know that most of these medications are already on the health insurance list on the essential medicine list, not everything is meant to go for free, we expect that it will go through your normal system of delivery of health service provision”
“And so, the expectation is that with time, by the time we’re done with this project in the next four to five years, you would have built your drug fund to the level where even in our absence, the supply chain can continue without Children Believe and its partners.”
The donation comes at a crucial time as the Northern Regional Medical Stores has been appealing to health facilities in the region to reimburse the facility to enable it to restock its medical supplies. Medicine availability at the medical stores is reportedly improving from previous years, although challenges persist.
According to Daniel Kweku Apawu, the Pharmacist and Manager of the medical stores warehouse, the facility recorded 40% of medicine availability in 2022, which has increased to 50% in 2023.
He attributed the shortages to the facility’s inability to reimburse their suppliers. Speaking at the Children Believe donation event, Mr Apawu appealed to various hospitals in the region to pay monies owed to the medical stores to enable them to clear their debts with suppliers.
“Two years down the line we were about 40%, last year we moved to 50% in medicine availability so we’re gradually improving but that does not mean there are no shortages. Usually, the challenges come when you’re not able to pay your suppliers. Because the suppliers bring commodities and you’re supposed to pay them and call for more, and if you’re not able to do that, you call them they’ll not be willing to supply you.
“So as a medical store that’s our biggest challenge, to make sure facilities pay us for us to also pay our suppliers. And usually, it is NHIA dependent, if the NHIA does not reimburse our facilities, they also find it difficult to reimburse us.
“To be very honest with you, gradually there is an improvement in NHIA reimbursement so it behoves our facilities to also do the needful, pay the regional medical stores so that we can also pay our suppliers and pay for more. So that is our biggest challenge, Money, Money and Money to run the place but we’re gradually improving on that.”
The 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey report revealed that the Northern Region has the highest percentage of underweight children aged 6-59 months (19.9%) and anaemia prevalence (69.4%), both surpassing the national figures of 12.3% and 48.9% respectively.
On his part, the Savannah Regional Director of Health, Jehoshaphat Mizawu, underscored the importance of the donation by Children Believe and its partners.
He expressed hope for sustainable drug availability in the Savannah region for some time to come with this donation.
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