Drug biased budget unveiled

DRUGS, medical supplies and reagents are the top priorities in the newly proposed budget of the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children Moving the ministry’s 898bn/- budget estimates for the 2018/19 fiscal year here yesterday, Minister Ummy Mwalimu said the government remains committed to improve infrastructure for health services delivery.

According to Ms Mwalimu, the government through the ministry will, in the next financial year, purchase 27 ambulances for distribution to various referral hospitals in the country. The new allocation for the health ministry has dropped by over 200bn/- from the 1.1tri/-, which the House approved for the docket during the 2017/18 financial year.

The minister said the government is also planning to strengthen specialties treatment to reduce the costs of referring patients abroad, with 40.7bn/- allocated for improvement of renal transplant, cochlear implants, purchase of state-of-the-art cancer equipment and completion of X-Ray building.

The minister further said 16bn/- will be spent on construction of a special private wing at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH), with Ocean Road Cancer Institute assigned special four beds to cater for private patients.

Ms Mwalimu named other areas of focus in improvement of health sector in the next financial year as preventive and curative measures, neonatal and maternal care, fight against tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS as well as satellite blood banks. She said 30bn/- is also billed for construction and renovation of regional referral hospital infrastructure and emergency units.

The basic health facilitiestandard guidelines are ready, said the minister, adding that the guidelines will be effectively applied this financial year, as the ministry plans to audit services offered by all public health centres, rank and license them accordingly.

As for the gender issues, Ms Mwalimu said they will work on avenues meant to improve gender equality and advocate for women and children rights. The move aims at empowering women economically as well as facilitating implementation of the National Plan on ending violence against women and children.

“We will mobilise women to come up with savings and credits associations to make it easy to coordinate and support them with loan facilities,” she told the House. Ms Mwalimu said they will also register all centres dealing with children in hardship conditions as well as support them with the needed services.

She assured the Parliament of improved and available services and rights to the elderly in the country. The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Services and Community Development, Mr Peter Serukamba called for timely release of money for recurrent and development projects to accomplish the budget objectives.