By Daily Revelation Reporter
Health minister Sylvia Masebo has accused pharmacists of conniving with private pharmacies to sell patients drugs that are readily available at the pharmacy in health facilities.
And Masebo has ordered the firing a health worker at one of the health facilities she toured in Lusaka, for asking a patient to buy drugs at a private pharmacy when it was available.
When she visited the pharmacy area at one of the health facilities in Lusaka, Masebo found out that a patient had been made to buy a certain drug for a week including on the day she was there.
She asked the pharmacist who was present why she told the patient that there was no medicine when it was available.
She demanded to be given some samples of the medicine and asked the victim to tell her who asked her to go and buy the medicine while assuring him that the drug he had been asked to buy was readily available.
“You can see the drug is here. So you tell me who said the drug was not there and you made that patient to go and buy,” she asked the pharmacist who had difficulties in explaining.
She turned to the victim and asked him who asked him to buy the drug.
“Come here, who asked you to go and buy drugs?” She asked. “Mankwala yaliko (the drugs are available).”
In response, the patient said he had been buying the said drug for the whole week.
Masebo then turned to the pharmacist and said, “So you are the one who was there? You are the one who told this man to go and buy drugs because you said there was no medicine. Now that there is, what do you want to tell me?”
She later asked who the supervisor was and ordered him to charge and fire lady in question.
“Who is the supervisor here? Can you charge this girl and I want her out of here. No more job for you. If I come back and find this lady, you yourself will be out,” she ordered before she walked away.
“You are conniving with private pharmacies. You are sending patients to go and buy drugs when drugs are there.”
