In Zamboanga City, village health centers running out of medicines

NEED TO WAIT Residents in the island barangays of Zamboanga City, such as those in Arena Blanco, will have no access to subsidized maintenance medicines for hypertension and diabetes as the City Health Office announces these medicines are not available in their village health centers due to delays in purchase request. —JULIE S. ALIPALA

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Residents of island barangays here as well as those along the coastline and in remote mountain villages are lamenting the lack of medicine for diabetes and hypertension in barangay health centers due to delays encountered in the city’s P16-million medicine procurement process, the city health official revealed.

Dr. Dulce Amor Miravite, head of the city health office (CHO), said her office already submitted their purchase request to the city’s bids and awards committee (BAC) as early as January this year, but the approval remained pending until now.

The P16-million budget request was only for hypertension and antidiabetic medications, which are two of the most requested medicines in health centers, particularly by the elderly, and were easily depleted, as shown by their inventory at the end of last year, she added.

Miravite said the CHO prepared the purchase request based on the budget provided to the office by the city government and had strictly observed the rules and regulations for such request.

“We follow the government procurement process, we submit these papers to other agencies especially the bids and awards committee but BAC also has its own independent processes,” she added.

Don’t blame us

Lawyer Alexander Eric Elias, who chairs the city’s BAC, however, blamed the delay on the failure of the two CHO staff members who sat at the BAC technical working group (TWG) on medicine to submit the complete documents from the medicine suppliers tapped by the CHO.

“These employees are responsible for going over the documents and other requirements from the suppliers of medicine. If their papers are lacking, we definitely could not award it,” Elias said.

He said that BAC was still awaiting the submission of complete documents from the medicine supplier and that it was the failure to submit these documents that had caused the delay in the medicine purchase.

“If these two members of the TWG cannot submit the completed documents, we cannot do anything about it. We can’t issue the resolution for the awarding [of the medicine purchase],” he said.

Impact

Miravite has yet to reply to the Inquirer’s repeated texts and calls on the two employees who represented her office at the BAC’s TWG on medicine.

But earlier, she said the city’s services to almost a million people in 98 barangays would be affected by the delay in the BAC’s approval.

Even a six-month delay on medicine purchases will have an effect on the city’s sustainable development goals, particularly on good health and well-being of patients, especially the senior citizens who are dependent on diabetic and hypertensive maintenance medicines, Miravite said.

“It will affect [our social development goals performance based on targets], but there are other ways we can address these concerns,” Miravite said. “In our campaigns, we are banking on prevention better than cure, and we tap help from other agencies [to achieve our goals],” she added. INQ

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