By Dr Canisius BANDA
UNAVAILABILITY of essential commodities, be they laboratory, medical or surgical, is a ’cause’ of death at health facilities. A cogent case can be made that such deaths have occurred in Zambia since August last year. It takes a lot of factors, amongst them tact and time, for a drug to move from a factory to the body of a patient.
Zambia is an import-dependent country, thanks to the post-1991 mal-privatisation and subsequent collapse of its industrial base. What this means is that most laboratory, medical and surgical supplies used to keep Zambians alive are imported. A precarious existential condition, a veritable threat to national security. This reality then demands that the supply chain of these life-saving essentials is managed very well indeed. Threats to supply chain management include quantification, order placements, factory challenges as occurred in the last two years of the manufactured COVID-19 pandemic, transportation, and distribution.
Fortunately, Zambia has among the best supply-chain managers in the world. Ask the UN. So what then explains the current, protracted, non-ending and life-threatening shortages of drugs, medical, surgical and laboratory supplies in our public health facilities?
The answer is simple: Hakainde HICHILEMA.
In August 2021, Hakainde HICHILEMA happened. He became Zambia’s seventh Republican President. Full of beans, and seeing corruption in every procurement process before his reign, he began to audit everything.
Grant THORNTON.
History is everything in understanding the present. Though audits are a required starting-point, undertaking for any newcomer, or new manager to any organisation, they need NOT disrupt ongoing supply-chain management. This is where he failed. His accounting intervention led to chaos. His government, fueled by emotion and vindictiveness, bearing a jaundiced view of existing government systems, gravely disrupted the supply-chain management of these commodities for Zambia. This political interference, though somewhat well-intentioned, is now the explanation for why someone has died and has been buried in Zambia today.
Responsible officers were fired. Supplies were stalled. New orders were not placed in time. Old suppliers were not paid. Procurement relationships were soured. Suspicion and fear became the norm. Ad infinitum.
Sensing danger, the reaction of the Ministry of Health to this healthcare crisis in Zambia was inept, ill-informed and at best farcical. Each health facility on its own should buy these commodities, that was the directive from our seemingly mentally challenged Ministry of Health. For how could these facilities do what they were being told to do when for years they relied on central planning, procurement and provision? For how could they when, for reasons of limited capacity in resources, planning and source-contacting, they just could not?
In addition, the Ministry of Health, seems not to know that bulk purchases, centrally done are more economical and better for a resource-mismanaged country like Zambia. Instead, a government seeking economic recovery, paradoxically embarked on a path that promoted fiscal indiscipline, and costly expenditure for a poorly funded government spending agency. You see, a change of government should NOT directly translate into a change of quantifiers, procurement officers, transporters or suppliers.
Purity of well-inspired thought is required in the management of people, especially when dealing with sensitive areas like healthcare. The quality, since August 2021, of Zambia’s public healthcare, has worsened if at all, it is still there.
Things are bad. Very bad.
Zambians today are more afraid of public health facilities than they are of disease. More and more are now reporting late at our health facilities, as more and more of them are resorting to trooping to mountains for prayers as an initial alternative, others are self-medicating and others still, desperate, are turning to all sorts of charlatans and quacks for help.
Both morbidity and mortalities, that, under different circumstances could be managed well, are now endemic and rising in our communities. Coupled with low credit levels in the economy for reasons of high base and lending rates, capital flight, low national income flows and failure to dismantle the local debt, the quality of life of the Zambians today has plummeted.
It is now in a crisis.
‘Immediately you vote us into office, we will lower the cost of living,’ Hakainde HICHILEMA steadfastly promised prior to August 2021.
The opposite has now happened.
Laura MITI, a CSO pro-regime change activist, this year: ‘The cost of living is now killing citizens.’
There we are, Hakainde HICHILEMA. The cost of living is now killing citizens.
But then, before they die, citizens become angry, unruly and disruptive, and difficult to govern. This is where we now are. The country has gone eerily quiet. The calm before the storm. This then is what happens when politics fails, when leadership is misleading and, when the world, in general, is falling apart and changing its order.
Meanwhile, Belgium 2.0 here we come! Next? Rwanda. Fiscal discipline? Not all civil servants are corrupt, sir.
And NOT all, merely exercising their right, voted for the PF, but are competent should be fired. Beware, political ill-perception of service structures can lead to process collapse, and citizens’ ill-health and death.
Leave vengeance to God.
Surely, we can do better.
Aluta continua!
The Author is National Chairman for Health – Patriotic Front and DEVELOPMENT ACTIVIST
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They still finding ways to give supply contracts to their party members who who still looking for license to deal in pharmaciticals.
The buck stops at HH………..
He prides himself as economic manager, he is to blame for any bottlenecks in the country and shouldbe on top of things…………
Banda knows the truth but he is hiding it not too well. He knows the crooks who had to be weeded out. Ati pay the suppliers, procure from the same corrupt places PF bought expired drugs and defective Condoms. So Banda wants bad drugs for now until we have a new system. Really desperate Doc, you can do better.
Praise singer Upnd cadre from Ngombe compound lsk we can not be saying they have been reorganizing since last year. Defending this requires a serious brain examination. In as mush as the old system was rotten the current one is not any better.
Such a dull doctor, you forget that your surrogate father stole monies and left empty coffers and you blame the person trying to fix the problem.
You need brain surgery seriously. You cant be mending a broken system for ten months. We should have seen some improvements by now.
For as long as we entertain such thoughts and write-ups Zambia won’t get anywhere. If HH is wrong why don’t those in charge stand up to him and tell him to his face? What this article has done is to direct people’s anger at one person. This isn’t the 1st time it’s happening. The UPND engaged a similar tactic, especially in the Southern province. When Govt erected poles to electrify some place one chap just got up in the night and chopped them down because he hated ECL so much that he didn’t want any of his projects in the area. ECL is gone but poverty hasn’t. Similarly, HH will serve his term and perhaps another lunatic will succeed him and we’ll continue with the same chaos. So the problem really isn’t the person in that Office but all of us
Im really getting confused in this matter. The minister said 90% of the allocated funds to MOH has been disbursed but UTH has serious shortages of medicine..they have even stopped blood count. I did uth used money for which was given in billions
To get x-ray you go to ZinoZam hospital for a fee.
Once you just realize it’s an article by Pilgrim just know this is the way of him dealing with losing the chance to be VP.
Too many dimwits holding doctoral certificates yet carrying empty heads.
One of them is now in police cell. (Dr CK)
Ayatollah no. 6 we are accustomed to poor service such that when we ask for what we deserve bearing mind the taxes that are cut from our pay we think they are doing us a favor in terms of development projects. Priority to the hospitals and affordable food should have been number 1 followed up with with kudos on education should be dealt with first and foremost, since they have told us before we cant eat roads. And rightly so follow up with the roads using the PPA model. Give the same tax incentives to local companies so that they can create jobs as well etc. Other things can follow later since we are told the narrative that Rome was not built in a day but the above mentioned can be done in the first year without doubt.
Dr Banda cannot believe his misfortune. In all the years that hiswonderful brain was in UPND, UPND lost elections. He left and UPND won. These should tell everybody what his roll was- a PF plant? Remember he used to visit State House!