By: Binta Jaiteh
The Minister of Health Modou Lamin Samateh, has described the process of procurement of drugs at the Gambia Public Procurement Authority (GPPA) as challenging.
The Minister made this disclosure in his response to the National Assembly Select Committee on Health, Refugees, Disaster and Humanitarian Relief regarding the availability of essential drugs in public health facilities across the country.
“The procurement system at GPPA regarding drug procurement requires a lot of challenges, the timeliness of quantification, preparation of documents, sending bidding documents, approval, contract committee meeting, advertisement, evaluation, selection and contract signing is expected to take six months,” Minister Samateh told the committee on Tuesday.
“We are all aware that the availability of drugs is very critical to the success of any health system. All health system requires an adequate number of drugs and other consumables. What makes the case of the Gambia different is that 100% of the drugs and medical consumables in our hospitals are imported and no single item is manufactured in the country,” he added.
According to him, the items the country needs for the health sector go beyond 500 and each has to be imported.
“Every year there is a quantification process, the health workers meet hospitals, the regional directorate, and national pharmaceutical departments to look at historical information of what was used in the previous year and the needs,” he further explained.
He also stated that using this trend the health workers will project a requirement for the subsequent year.
“After each quantification method, we also look at the budgetary allocations for the year coming. The fund budgeted can only cover 30% of the national requirement to ensure that drugs are available at the hospitals 24 hours or every week.
“We want to let the people that the government is working closely with the NA and the funds allocated for drugs have increased drastically,” he maintained.
Minister Samateh revealed that the major problem we have as a country is the unreliability of supplies. “For the past few years, those that win the biggest chunk of these drugs are Gambian suppliers but unfortunately the drugs are not delivered on time. The supplier supplied some but the issue we got was COVID-19 affected because some of the factories had to close due to the pandemic,” he lamented.
He outlined efforts to strengthen procurement systems, improve distribution networks, and enhance collaboration with key stakeholders to address the situation effectively.
