Kisii County governor Simba Arati has launched a medical monitoring and tracking system to curb drug theft and mismanagement.
The technology that has been developed by Huawei Technical Associates (TA) has a capability of monitoring and tracking medical supplies from the point of procurement to the end users to ensure drugs do not get lost along the supply chain.
The technology will minimize the human – drug interaction hence minimal chances of drug disappearance before reaching the patients.
“We need to do things differently, I know how you used to receive medicine before and there has been no proper follow up. We’ll have to start a different chapter and we’re starting a new process. For those which are going to level four, three and two hospitals will have to be in a system.” Arati confirmed.
Governor Arati said that Huawei Technical Associates are offering the technology for free for a period of two months and staff have been informed of the process and asked to get first-hand experience on the performance of the technology so as to man the health facilities.
“We have decided to notify all the staff, doctors and nurses that we are going to install the technology in all the places which will be manned technologically.” Arati insisted.
He also indicated that after disbursing medicine to various health facilities, the remainder will have to be monitored and tracked up to the issuance of the last dose.
On his part, Kisii County Pharmacist Dr. Kimtai Cheruiyot expressed his gratitude to the government for acquiring this technology saying that it will go a long way in ensuring proper distribution and management of medicine in all the health facilities across the county.
Dr. Cheruiyot indicated, “We have been privileged to have been taken through the system by TA and we are now going to use this tool to monitor our commodities to the end. Today we’re going to confirm the quantities as per the delivery note before we load to the system.
Once we load the system we then push it to the Sub - County management team to look at what they are set to receive and administer to specific patients and that data is captured for verification and accountability.” he said.
There has been rampant public outcry of the theft of medicine especially from the Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital (KTRH), a thing that governor Simba Arati’s government is keen to rectify.
