The Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, Community, Development, Gender, Elders and Children, Dr Mpoki Ulisubisya, said yesterday that the government will soon announce indicative medical costs for both public and private hospitals in the country. He was speaking during a television interview programme on the performance of his ministry for the past one year.
He said the government is committed to offering quality and reliable health services, but at the same time there should be no form of exploitation in offering such services. “We are carefully reviewing medical costs in our hospitals. We want to make sure all people enjoy quality and affordable services,” said the PS. According to Dr Ulisubisya, the ministry will be offering indicative medical services costs according to the actual changes of services and time.
“We want to review and announce indicative medical costs like it happens with fuel prices, there have been announcement of indicative prices for fuel from time to time,” he noted. He said health stakeholders are involved in all procedures and that they look forward to reaching a consensus soon.
Commenting on the availability of medical equipment for testing various diseases including cancer, the PS said in the near future public hospitals will be equipped with modern equipment that will enable specialist doctors to detect the spread of the disease in the patient’s body.
He said for many years the government has been forced to send blood samples for tests to South Africa and Nairobi, Kenya. “There will be no need for going to South Africa or Kenya.
The test will be conducted here in the country,” he said. The PS said the government through his ministry is doing everything in its power to ensure all zonal hospitals have modern equipment so that patients could be attended in their respective areas.
He mentioned some of the hospitals as Bugando in Mwanza, Mbeya Zonal Referral Hospital (MZRH), the Benjamin Mkapa Ultramodern Hospital located at the University of Dodoma (UDOM) and Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) in Kilimanjaro Region.
He said other hospitals will be in Mtwara and Tabora regions respectively. On the supply and availability of drugs in hospitals, the PS said the availability of drugs in various public hospitals by May, this year, will be at 90 per cent. “We have set strong strategies to ensure there is reliable supply of medicines in our hospitals, timely supply will reach 90 per cent by May, this year,” he said.
He said the government and the Medical Store Department (MSD) have improved the procedures of supplying medicines to hospitals and that there is no longer bureaucracy like before.
“The cost for supplying medicines and other medical equipment is now paid by the ministry, this enables hospitals or government institutions to easily order medicine from MSD,” he said. On the availability of children vaccines, the PS said at the moment there is no shortage of vaccines in all parts of the country.”
We had a challenge in the previous months because the supplier received many orders from different countries, therefore, we were forced to wait, but as we speak right now, everything is in the right place,” said Dr Ulisubisya.
On infant and maternal mortality rates, Dr Ulisubisya said the situation is not good and that the ministry and health stakeholders must to come up with new strategies to curb the situation.
“It is our task to come up with new strategies that will help to face this challenge, our aim is end the problem by 2020,” said the PS. He mentioned some of the diseases that mainly cause mothers and infants death as anaemia among pregnant women, HIV/Aids infections, epilepsy in pregnancy and abortion.
Others include malaria and pneumonia. On hepatitis, the PS said Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) is currently offering free medication for the dangerous disease. He said the government is conducting a pilot study and that later the service will cover other districts across the country.
“We have started to test and provide medication on the scourge at MHN because we want to know how big the problem in the country is, we will later cover other districts in the nation,” he said.
Daily News
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