By Rita Michael
Bauchi
Bauchi State government is to extend drug revolving scheme to about 160 Primary Health Care (PHC) centres.
The Managing Director of the state Drugs Management and Medical Consumable Agency (DMMA), Abdulkadir Ahmed, disclosed this when the subcommittee on Advocacy and Knowledge Management (AKMC) of the Bauchi State Accountability Mechanism on Maternal and Child Health Care (BASAM) visited him on Tuesday.
According to him, already about 160 PHC centres had been enjoying the support of donors such as Plan International and N-SHIP while the DMMA played its regulatory roles of providing training and supervision of the DRF to ensure success of the scheme.
He said, “Our plan is to ensure that by the year 2019 all the 323 PHC centres across the state operate the DRF to afford the socially disadvantaged families the opportunity to buy quality drugs at affordable rate
“It is pertinent to inform you that part of our agency’s mandate is to ensure sustainable drug supply system in all government hospitals particularly in secondary health facilities, but I assure you that your visit will ginger us to introduce the DRF scheme in the remaining PHC centres once we receive more funding from government,” Ahmed added.
The managjng director thereby assured the advocacy team of his agency’s commitment to sustain the supply of life saving commodities in support of MNCH services, saying, “our agency will always favour indigent families especially those living in the rural areas.”
Ahmed however expressed regret that its takeoff fund had dropped from N27 million to just about N2 million, noting that despite the financial challenge, the agency had been able to weather the storm through effective management of available scarce resources.
Besides, the chairman of Sub- the advocacy and knowledge management committee of BASAM, Ladan Isah Dalhatu, said that since most women of child bearing age normally sought medical support from PHC facility within their immediate environment, the DMMA should extend its services beyond the secondary health facilities to the PHC centres.
Dalhatu frowned at the negative health index which listed Bauchi as one of the states with the highest maternal and child mortality in the North East, hoping that the DMMA would compliment the effort of plan international and N-SHIP by urgently introducing the DRF services for the benefit of the disadvantaged families.
