EU donates US$14m

The money would be used under the Ministry of Heath and Child Welfare’s Essential Medicines Support Programme.
Receiving the money on behalf of Government, the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Dr Henry Madzorera, said the drug procurement programme had improved the availability of essential medicines in the country.

“In 2007/8, there was loss of qualified staff within the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to effectively manage programmes,” Dr Madzorera said adding that there was also a deterioration of infrastructural capacity for the management of medicines and a decline in the real value of the budget allocated for the procurement of essential medicines.
“Consequently there were low levels of availability of essential medicines (28 percent according to the 2008 EC VHSSP Monitoring survey) within public health sector institutions,” said Dr Madzorera.

“To date, the most significant impact the programme has had is the improvement in the availability of essential medicines at health facilities (85 percent of health facilities have 93 availability of selected medicines according to the Vital Medicines and Health Services Survey – VMAHS July 2011,” he said.
Dr Madzorera said the programme had improved the capacity for the management of essential medicines at NatPharm and the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.

He said Government should finance the social services and rely on the country’s resources to avoid dependency.
“It is poverty which lead us to look for donations, rich nations do not look for them,” said Dr Madzorera.
“We must finance social services from taxes. We have a lot of natural resources, what do we do with them?
“We need to benefit from our minerals, agriculture produce and export finished products.”

Speaking at the same occasion, UNICEF country representative, Dr Peter Salama, said the funds would be used to procure essential medicines to cover 80 percent of the national annual essential medicines needs.

The funds would also help with the delivery of medicines to all 1 400 primary and secondary health care facilities nationwide.
“I am sure you all agree that this will go a long way to ensuring that Zimbabwe stays on the path to full recovery of the health sector, in particular, to ensuring that the poor and vulnerable members of the society also have access to quality health services,” said Dr Salama.

He said the contribution would also be critical in strengthening the institutional capacity of the Ministry of Health, NatPharm and the directorate of pharmacy services to ensure optimal storage, handling, distribution and monitoring essential medicines.