NMS clarifies on gloves

Jun 23, 2009

THE National Medical Stores (NMS) has refuted reports that it supplied expired and substandard gloves to hospitals in southern Uganda.

By Anthony Bugembe

THE National Medical Stores (NMS) has refuted reports that it supplied expired and substandard gloves to hospitals in southern Uganda.

Visiting Lyantonde Hospital over the weekend, primary healthcare state minister James Kakooza was told the NMS had supplied gloves of a small size.

“Our thinking is the minister was not given the right information.

“The gloves were a donation and not just dumped there. The hospital requisitioned for them. Every government facility is free to requisition for any health supplies about to expire in our stores provided it can use them before expiry,” Moses Kamabare, NMS general manager, told journalists on Monday in Kampala.

If it is true they were being used, Kamabare noted, then NMS will help the hospital to store them before incineration.

Dr. Obbo Okoth, the medical superintendent, on April 8 requested for 47,500 pairs of surgical gloves of size 6.5 of which 39,967 pairs were supplied a week later.

The gloves expired at the end of May.

NMS is charged with storing and distributing drugs and health supplies to government health facilities.

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