Civil Society Forum Kashmir has registered strong protest against the news reports unraveling serious lapses in the Health and Medical Education Department as revealed by the CAG report that has brought to light some serious lapses in the procurement processes for equipment and supplies in Health Department, and has also depicted criminal apathy on part of the authorities in ensuring quality and safe medicine to patients that can be gauged from the fact that 50.95 lakh sub-standard tablets, capsules and injections had been given to patients in hospitals. CAG report has also revealed gross deficiency of drugs and disposables for testing in healthcare institutes. This lack of mechanism is resulting in supply of substandard medicines to the patients which is highly shameful.CSFK has taken a serious note of these lapses and urged upon the health ministry to streamline procurement of medicines on scientific lines alongwith their foolproof quality testing leaving no room at all for any compromises on the quality of medicines being supplied to patients. There is need to establish state-of- art warehouses in each district besides central warehouses in Srinagar, Leh and Jammu divisions so as to ensure round-the- clock availability of medicines in all health facilities of the state. To ensure this dedicated transportation facilities, adequate funding, sufficiently trained manpower are also needed besides a systematic centralized procurement and decentralized distribution of medicines.
CSFK expressed dismay over the way JKMSC is functioning in the state in absence of proper procurement policy framework, lack of drug storage facilities in all districts and divisions of the state, lack of dedicated transportation facilities, non-availability of qualified and adequate manpower trained specifically in supply chain management, paucity of funds, lack of drug testing facilities and deficiency of drug sampling procedures. All this has led to inefficiency of the JKMSC and has paved way for failure of the whole system. Therefore CSFK urges upon the concerned authorities to streamline the entire system on scientific lines and organize all their activities in a systematic manner in tune with international standards and guidelines. In absence of such a fool proof mechanism JKMSC will continue to fail in its objectives of making standard quality medicines available throughout the year without any stock-outs in all health facilities of the state.CSFK admires the spirit with which JKMSC has been established however the way it is functioning is pathetic and needs some serious thinking. No such corporation can be a success unless it is fully autonomous, fully transparent, free of corruption and functions on well established principles of pharmaceutical supply chain management. Government needs to engage suitably qualified and adequately trained personnel for the purpose of drug procurement, demand estimation, quantification, pre-qualification and post-qualification procedures. It needs to fulfill all necessary pre-requisites like state-of- art warehouses, dedicated transportation, qualified manpower, adequate funds, sophisticated quality testing facilities, regular inspections of retail outlets and frequent drug sampling in order to bring the JKMSC back on track and fulfill its objectives. (KNS)