NMS has no budget to distribute PPEs

By; Francis Lubega

2^nd July 2021

National Medical Store has shocked the parliamentary National Task Force for not having money to distribute supplies for covid emergency needs to government health centers.

This was in the meeting where the NMS boss Moses Kamabale appeared before the committee to find solutions to the covid-19 pandemic demands in health sector.

To the surprise of the members of the committee, NMS CEO Kamabare said that they have had no budget of purchasing or even hire warehouses or distribute the few covid-19 materials they have.

He said that at times they are faced with a challenge were donors give them covid materials like emergency medicines, vaccines Personal protective gears and they fail to find money for storage warehouse or coolers.

It’s from this that he appealed to the committee to ask ministry of health and Finance to allocate them additional funds in the current budget to enable NMS deliver to its expectation.

Meanwhile when asked about the scarcity of PPEs in public hospitals, Kamabale confirmed they NMS has the PPEs but they do not have money to facilitate the distributing channels.

He further added that they also received 80bn shs in this 2021/22 financial year to purchase covid vaccines but they are waiting for cabinet decision from where to buy the vaccines from.

It should be remembered that India stopped the selling of the AstraZeneca vaccine where Uganda was originally planning to buy the vaccine from.