Gauteng Health Department assures public of medicine availability
The Democratic Alliance in Gauteng recently announced that the medical supply depot responsible for distributing medications is facing delays in distributing essential medicines to healthcare facilities.
Picture: Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG - The Gauteng Health Department has stated that medicine across its public health facilities remains consistently available, despite global pharmaceutical supply constraints.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng recently announced that the medical supply depot responsible for distributing medications is facing delays in distributing essential medicines to healthcare facilities.
It said this has resulted in patients having to wait for long periods to collect their prescriptions from hospitals and clinics.
The department says the DA statement has misrepresented information, which has resulted in concerns about the performance of the medical supply depot.
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Gauteng Health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba said no health facility in the province has reported systematic stock-outs of essential medicines.
"According to the National Department of Health's monitoring dashboard, Gauteng is currently the best performing province in the country regarding medicine availability. On average, hospitals in the province maintain a 95 percent availability rate for all formulary medicines and 98 percent availability for essential medicines."