Health ministry opposes plan to end Kemsa monopoly

The Ministry of Health has opposed plans to strip the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) of exclusive rights to sell drugs and medical kits to county and national health facilities.

Principal Secretary for Health Susan Mochache told Parliament that allowing counties to bypass Kemsa would lead to expensive drugs from private pharmaceutical firms and derail the attainment of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

The proposals to end Kemsa’s monopoly are contained in the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which seeks to change the law and give counties a free hand to choose suppliers for drugs and medical kits.

“Kemsa should remain as the first point of call for procurement, warehousing and distribution of Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) listed in relevant essential lists at the county referral hospital,” PS Mochache told the Senate Committee on Health on Thursday.

She added that lawmakers should instead change the law to ring-fence county allocations to pay debts owed to Kemsa.

The government’s opposition to the Bill highlights its intent to protect Kemsa from losing its single largest customer cluster, which could hit its sales hard.

The latest report from the Auditor-General shows that counties owed Kemsa Sh2.64 billion in June 2019, twice the amount owed by the Ministry of Health, pointing to the lucrative business that Kemsa gets from the devolved units.

The Ministry argues that maintaining the State agency as the exclusive supplier guarantees availability of stocks despite distribution hitches facing the pharmaceutical sector in recent years.

The Bill was unanimously passed by senators during its Second Reading last month, signalling the lawmakers’ push to end Kemsa’s monopoly, which has seen counties receive drugs nearing expiry due to bureaucracy in the distribution of the drugs.

The agency is currently embroiled in a Covid-19 kits procurement scandal said to have led to losses estimated at billions of shillings, prompting President Uhuru Kenyatta’s intervention by disbanding its top management.

The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and National Youth Service (NYS) last month took over operations, setting the stage for declaring redundancies or terminating the services of more than 900 staff at the agency.