Patients’ agony as Kemsa-NMS debt row leaves hospitals stocked out of essential drugs
Patients are forced to buy drugs from private hospitals and chemist after a shortage of drugs in hospitals following Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) and Kenya Medical Supply Authority (Kemsa) debt row.
The disagreement has occasioned deep agony especially amongst in-patients whose kin are forced to buy essential drugs from outside.
City Hall owes Sh367 million in pending bills to Kemsa prompting health crisis due to the lack of drugs in county hospitals.
Acting Kemsa Chief Executive John Kabuchi said the county government owes the authority over Sh367 million despite the county assembly allocating Sh374.9 million in its first supplementary budget in May last year.
“The Nairobi Metropolitan Service currently has an outstanding bill of Sh367,659,727.10. They last serviced their account on May 17,2021,” said Kabuchi in a statement.
According to Kabuchi, Kemsa has also not received any order for medical supplies from the NMS for the new hospitals.
He added that the last local purchase in the last financial year was not supplied due to the huge standing debt.
The last supply was made to more than 100 county health facilities was done on January 28 last year.
The situation has affected more than 10 new Level Two and Three hospitals which were built by NMS.
Kemsa and City Hall have had bad ties in the past over arrears.
In May last year, the county assembly through a supplementary budget allocated Sh374.9 million to clear a debt owed Kemsa.
NMS director of health services Ouma Oluga admitted the health facilities in Nairobi have a shortage of drugs.
“This is a very big challenge because we barely have anything. Hopefully, it will be sorted soonest as it’s of urgency,” he said.
He said the Sh374.9 million paid to Kemsa was money owed to the authority by NMS.
He said Kemsa wants pending bills from City Hall cleared as well, which had accumulated before NMS came into office.
However, it was not mentioned how much City Hall owes Kemsa.
“On our side, NMS has paid all its Kemsa bills. But now Kemsa insists that we must clear the previous Nairobi county government bills too,” Oluga added.
In 2017, the authority stopped supplying medicine to Nairobi hospitals over a Sh285 million debt.
It took the intervention of President Uhuru Kenyatta and the former Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki for Kemsa to resume supplies to the county last year.
In March 2019, the Nairobi county government announced it was considering turning to other drugs suppliers to stock its health centres, accusing Kemsa of being unreliable.
