Unity State’s Mayendit County is grappling with a severe shortage of crucial human medicine after they were not included in the last consignment John Gatwech, the county’s health director said.
He told Radio Tamazuj over the weekend that patients who go to health centers suffer and have to buy medicine from commercial outlets.
“United Nations Children Fund and the World Health Organization always support our health facilities through International Medical Corps (IMC) which delivered medicine a month ago but essential drugs like antibiotics, measles medicine and anti-malarial drugs and pain killers among other medicines were not supplied,” Gatwech said.
The county health director disclosed that as a result of the scarcity of vital medicines, the staff of the Primary Health Care Unit is not working normally.
“We, the local authorities, raised the concern about a shortage of drug supplies in Mayendit County Headquarters, Tutnyang, Thaker, and Rubkuach primary care centers with the NGOs and the national government in Juba because our health centers run out of drugs and our communities are suffering,” he explained. “We also do not have proper county health stores and a cold chain management system. If there is no medicine, we have to say so.”
“We have weekly and monthly meetings and we requested that the missing drugs be supplied and they said the national health ministry will supply it but nothing g has happened till now,” Gatwech added.
He urged the health partners who supply medicine to intervene.
For his part, Haak Khor Liah, a Mayendit County resident confirmed the shortage of drugs in the area.
“We are requesting IMC to support with essential medicine urgently otherwise our people will die because the government is not putting our issues on the first agenda,” he said.
According to Khor, many patients do not have the energy to trek to Mayiendit town where there are some drugs.