Unity State’s Panyijiar County is grappling with a severe shortage of crucial human medicine after they were not included in the last consignment, the county’s health director said.
Peter Yoak told Radio Tamazuj over the weekend that patients who go to health centers have to buy medicine from commercial outlets.
“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) always support our health facilities through International Medical Corps (IMC) which delivered medicine a month ago but essential drugs like antibiotics, measles medicine and anti-malarial drugs and pain killers among other medicines were not supplied,” he said.
The county health director disclosed that as a result of the scarcity of vital medicines, the staff of the Primary Health Care Unit is not working normally.
“We, the local authorities, raised the concern about a shortage of drug supplies in Panyijiar County Headquarters, Nyal, and other primary care centers with the NGOs and the national government in Juba because our health centers run out of drugs and our communities are suffering,” he explained. “We also do not have proper county health stores and a cold chain management system. If there is no medicine, we have to say so.”
“We have weekly and monthly meetings and we requested that the missing drugs be supplied and they said the national health ministry will supply it but nothing has happened till now,” Yoak added.
He urged the health partners who supply medicine to intervene.
For her part, Nyaluak Kuol, a Panyijiar County resident, confirmed the shortage of drugs in the area.
“We are requesting IMC to support with essential medicine urgently otherwise our people will die because the government is not putting our issues on the first agenda,” she said. “We missed some drugs Since February there has been no response from the partners up to now.”
According to Kuol, many patients do not have the energy to trek to Panyijiar town where there are some drugs.