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The Government has allayed fears of a shortage of Anti-Retroviral (ARV) drugs following late delivery of a consignment meant to benefit 540,730 HIV and Aids patients.
Health Principal Secretary Peter Tum said although there were hitches in shipping the drugs and test kits, these had been addressed. The consignment was a grant from Global Fund.
Despite the National Treasury releasing funds in the 2017-2018 financial year, and procurement being done in October 2017, the first batch of drugs was only delivered on July 30 this year.
The last batch was expected a month earlier.
Mr Tum said the delays in delivery were a result of global supply constraints.
He said the matter had been sorted out and the supplier had committed to deliver the drugs in batches of 42,000 (which arrived on July 30), 250,000 by August 24 and 100,000 by September 15.
Last batch
The last batch of 100,000 is expected by September 30.
The PS said since deliveries had not been made by June 30 this year as scheduled, payments could not be processed until the 2018-2019 financial year.
“We would like to emphasise that there are no current or impending shortages of any category of ARVs as we still have 15 months’ stock,” he said.
“Our team is always assessing stock levels to ensure that there is a three-month supply at all times.”
Some 80,000 Rapid Test kits, which were also part of the consignment, were also not processed on arrival because the supplier labelled the kits for USAid instead of the Government.
“The supplier took a long time to send a team to the country to correct the error,” said Tum.
According to the PS, the error has since been corrected and payment for the kits is being processed.
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