Hon. Masebo decided to sentence to death everyone who depends on public health institutions for personal reasons. How more irresponsible can one be?
Lusaka, June 15 – The Daily Nation has reported that Dr. Anna Chifungula, the ZAMMSA Board Chairperson, while appearing on Diamond TV’s COSTA Show, confessed that the critical and persistent shortage of essential medicines and other medical supplies has been caused by political interference in the procurement of drugs.
Dr. Chifungula said when the new dawn government came into power, it decided to disrupt the procurement and supply chain of medicines by instructing that no drugs should be purchased from the country’s traditional suppliers for political reasons than capacity when there was clearly no alternative source.
Put differently, the new dawn government sentenced to death all the Zambians who depend on public health institutions merely for political reasons. How more irresponsible can a government be?
While Health Minister, Hon. Sylvia Masebo, clearly knew that ZAMMSA was not allowed to procure essential drugs from local suppliers and there were no alternative sources in place, she went on to paint health workers as thieves.
Hon. Masebo even had the audacity to dispute the findings of a Parliamentary Committee that stated that there was a critical shortage of medicines in public health institutions, indirectly ridiculing the Speaker of the National Assembly.
Put differently, Hon. Masebo chose to lie on the floor of the House instead acting on the findings of the Parliamentary Committee to save lives.
The question to President Hakainde Hichilema now is:
Whose interest should he serve between Hon. Sylvia Masebo’s who was comfortable with patients losing lives to curable illnesses or those of the families who lost their dear ones when government had the capacity to save their lives?
The sanctity of life is inviolable under any circumstances and the former Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Chitalu Chilufya, has on several occasions urged government Parliament and various fora to abandon its cruel state of denial and deal with the drugs crisis immediately.
After saving the life of an epileptic patient who he found convulsing on Chikwa Road, Dr. Chitalu Chilufya posed the following questions which, unfortunately, landed on deaf ears:
◾How many citizens are convulsing, injuring themselves or falling in fires and burning or dying?
◾How many other chronic patients suffering from diabetes, hypertension, HIV/AIDS, etc, are suffering quietly or dying prematurely without getting the help from our hospitals?
◾For how long will the persistent drug shortages be ignored by Government; is life as sacred under this UPND regime which seems obsessed with political point-scoring?
Corruption today in the Health Sector has killed more people than the Honeybee scandal which has turned out to be a hoax and yet people were more enraged about the POSSIBILITY of dying and not now that they are dying. If anything, an expired drug can still save a life not a non existent one.
There’s need to demand for justice over Hon. Sylvia Masebo’s conduct. These are the cases our Law Enforcement Agencies must be seen to be busy with not being used as tools for persecution of perceived political opponents.
They must seriously pursue Dr. Chifungula’s revelations that some political leaders have risked the lives of many Zambians some of whom have died needlessly for lack of medicines because those in power have their own preferred suppliers.
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