Kisumu residents demand for essential medicines
July 24, 2009 by StopStockouts
Tuesday 14 July 2009 Kisumu: People thronged the Pollyview Hotel in Kisumu, the third largest town in Kenya, to hear about stock-outs of essential medicines in the country. The overzealous crowd was composed of Kisumu residents from various walks of life including youth groups, health workers from communities and facilities around the city, peer educators, civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), patients and the general public.
The crowd was empowered, knowledgeable and mos of all knew their rights. A prompt from the Kenya Hospices and Palliative Care Association’s (KEHPCA) David Musyoki made them ready to take up the “stop the stock-outs” banner, march the streets and demand that essential medicines be made available to them.
“We have always thought these medicines for opportunistic infections must be bought by ourselves! But now we know that we have a right to get these medicines from public health facilities,” exclaimed Njoki Kimemia, a woman living with HIV in Kisumu.
Eunice Owino, who works for a local community based organization (CBO), said there are serious problems in hospitals in the region in regards to medicines. “As a CBO we are faced with a lot of challenges because patients who are sent away from public health facilities turn to us for medicines which we do not have.”
Patience Aoko, a nurse at New Nyanza Provincial General Hospital, said she has frequent contact with people who need medicines. “I am happy about this stop stock-outs campaign that will ensure access to medicine for all in the country,” she stated.
As a health worker in a government hospital she said the challenge of accessing medicines is real. She added that they turn a lot of patients away because a needed medicine is out-of-stock. “Most public health facilities lack medicines which are essential and treat common illnesses,” she observed.
The Kenya Treatment Access Movement’s (KETAM) James Kamau told the gathering that he was saddened by the fact that people continued to die from preventable and treatable diseases. “Without a healthy nation you cannot achieve development. Our people are dying while letters we write to the Permanent Secretaries at the Ministries of Health regarding serious stock-outs of essential medicines countrywide have not been responded to. It’s been more than a month since we wrote them!” he lamented.
Some of the new issues that emerged form the forum included:
Taxation on VCT test kits used by NGOs
There are reported cases of medicines released from the central stores never reaching their intended destination. This calls for transparency and accountability along the supply chain and for full independence of the central medical supplies agency (KEMSA).
Health workers at the grassroots level have a rich experience of unavailability of medicines in their facilities.
Emma Wanyonyi of the Consumer Information Network (CIN) noted that the public needs to be assertive and take responsibility for their health, including when they are unable to access medicines. From the experience of the health workers, the passive nature of many patients contributes to the inefficiency, negligence and corruption at health facilities. “The public needs to be empowered. This is part of what the “stop the stock-outs” campaign, and the public forum in particular, aims to achieve.”
Participants at the Kisumu public forum
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