The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) has appealed to the Senate through its Standing Committee on Health to facilitate collection of outstanding debt totaling to KES 4.1bn.
Counties owe KEMSA a total of Sh 2.8bn while the Ministry of health owes the agency a total of Sh 1.3bn
“We ask support from the Senate in debt collection and we hope that individual Senators can have interactions with their counties for intervention,” said KEMSA CEO, Dr Jonah Manjari.
In the meeting hosted by the Senate health Committee chaired by Sen Michael Mbito, Senators tasked the Authority to table before it the list of counties they have categorized as “notorious” and hence risky to deliver medical products.
The Senate Committee further demanded to know how the debts by the Ministry of Health had accrued to over a billion shillings.
KEMSA said that it supply’s to the Ministry of health under the fee for service system meaning that they can only be paid after supplying but the ministry has not been fulfilling its part of the bargain.
The Committee through Vice Chair, Sen (Dr) Abdullahi Ali put KEMSA to task on the shortfall of 30 percent of medical products that the Authority is unable to supply which the Council of Governors had in previous engagements cited as a stumbling block to the success of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
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