By Conan Businge
THE Government has suspended the supply of drugs to about 500 health centres.

The centres, listed by the Ministry of Health as recipients of drugs and funding, are suspected to be non-existent.

Of these, 100 have already been confirmed to be ‘ghosts’.

Health state minister James Kakooza, in an interview with The New Vision yesterday, said: “There is no way we are going to continue sending drugs to health centres, when we are not sure how they were created. This might be a massive waste of the taxpayers’ money!”

He added: “Supply to the health units will be suspended untill investigations into the matter is resolved. We are going to make sure that all those creating ghost centres are punished.”

Kakooza concurred with reports by the National Medical Stores (NMS) that 100 ghost health centres were confirmed in different parts of the country.

“We have already proved that there are ghost health units. All those responsible for creating them will be aligned for trial when the investigations are done,” he said.

The unreconciled 500 health centres have overtime been submitted to the NMS by the district health officers yet they do not appear on the health ministry’s list.

The ministry’s list differs from the one they originally forwarded for the supply of drugs, the drug body said.

The investigations are being jointly carried out by the Internal Security Organisation and the recently-established Drugs Inspection Unit headed by Dr. Diana Atwine.

This leaves about 2,400 Government health centres that receive drugs from the NMS on a monthly basis.

The drug body said most of the non-existent facilities are health centres II and III, which are supervised by district health officers.

The district officials are suspected to be collaborating with those in the health ministry.

“The investigations are going to be thorough. If some people at the ministry are involved, they will also be punished. No one will be covered during these investigations,” Kakooza warned.

The registration of health centres is done at the recommendation of the district health officers.

The Government has allocated sh18b this financial year for the direct supply of drugs to health units from NMS.