Hospitals to receive medical supplies through Posta in new deal

Hospitals located in remote parts of the country will now be able to receive medical supplies without delay.

This is after the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority partnered with the Postal Corporation of Kenya to do the supply.

The Sh120 million contract signed on Tuesday will see deliveries done by use of motorbikes, small trucks, middle level trucks.

Other high value and high impact supplies such as snake anti-venom will be delivered through courier service.

A system has been put in place to ensure all commodities are tracked.

In addition, regional distribution centres and warehouses will be set up in Kisumu and Mombasa to help ease the delivery to the last mile.

“In order to achieve and meet UHC needs, KEMSA is required to increase its capacity to supply essential health products and technologies countrywide. We realize that we need to work with an institution that has enough capacity the same vision as KEMSA has in terms of delivering to the last mile,” KEMSA CEO Jonah Manjari said.

The Kenya Household Health Expenditure and Utilisation Survey conducted in 2013 showed that every month about 20 per cent of Kenya’s population experiences an illness.

This accounts for more than nine million people out of which about 7.8 million of these individuals will seek care at one of over 10,000 facilities in the country.

And around 120,000 Kenyans will be hospitalized.

“With Posta we will be expecting that the commodities will be delivered on time because that is also part of the key performance indicators of the advanced distribution management system.”

According to Manjari, PCK have very good efficient logistic mechanism to go to each and every region of this country.

The focus in this partnership will be on service delivery and not profiteering.

“It is not a question of 99 per cent arrival; it has to be 100 per cent arrival. The post office has been in logistics for more than 100 years. It is complementary to what KEMSA is doing so that we ensure every Kenyan gets their medicine on time,” Post Master General and CEO PCK Dan Kagwe.

The authority has been tasked with delivering dialysis and renal consumables, radiology products and digital films, non communicable disease commodities through access programmes, MRI and CT scan products and expanded oncology products and other supplies to the UHC pilot counties.

The agency in the UHC programme has also been tasked with ensuring quality medical products at fair price, adequacy in stocks of essential health medicines and supplies and delivery of medicines and supplies in good time as requested by health facilities.

“It is our business. Moving stuff from A to B is what we have been doing for years, whether it is letters, parcels packages, ballot papers, books, medicine that is what we have been doing so that experience of delivery and logistics is what we are bringing on to the table with KEMSA,” Kagwe noted.

Kagwe reaffirmed that Posta has more than enough capacity in terms of vehicles to handle the deliveries, and trained at experienced officer to handle dangerous goods.

“If it is movement we are in every corner of this country on top of that our mandate is to ensure there is communication in this country.”