‘Immediate action on emergency medicine requirement’

By PMA RASHEED 

The Gulf Today, 10 May 2011

Dubai: All medical districts in the UAE will be provided with effective mechanism to solve problems of insufficient medicines and other issues on shortage of resources, assures health minister Dr Hanif Hassan Ali Al Qassim.

Speaking at a meeting with directors of medical districts on Monday, he said that the entire residents in the country will be able to avail the best healthcare services and enjoy global standard medical practices in various specialisations.

“More programmes are in pipeline to encourage Emiratis to work in the healthcare sector, with more continuous medical education (CME) and international training sessions for nursing and midwifery professionals to meet the serious shortage of nationals in these health professions. The MoH recently recruited 35 UAE national nurses in various hospitals,” he explained.

“The entire health facilities in the seven Emirates will be provided with sufficient quantity of medicines, medical and lab equipment. Each medical district has to submit a specific plan for its actual requirement of medicines and equipment, in order to ensure the availability of medicines in these stores,” he added.

“The mechanism will specify the quantities of available medicines in the MoH warehouses as well as at hospitals and health centres, to guarantee availability of medicines, especially for chronic diseases,” elaborated Dr Hassan.

According to him, all practices related to import, purchase and storage of medicines will be regulated. “The new mechanism will monitor the procurement, and disburse of the drugs through continuous supervision measures of the medical stores, pharmacies upon evaluating the medicine purchase orders.”

“Immediate actions will be taken on purchase orders, to meet emergency requirement of medicines. The central stores will send official circulars to the stores, pharmacies and centres in the medical districts to specify a certain timeline for receiving and ensuring the safety and non-manipulation of the medicines,” the minister concluded.