Kiruddu National Referral hospital has used up 98% of its budget for medicines and is teetering on the brink of a drugs stock out.
Dr Charles Kabugo, the executive director of Kiruddu National Referral hospital, said the run on the budget was brought on by the unanticipated huge number of patients received after the hospital introduced new clinics.
The hospital is now seeking a supplementary budget of Shs 1bn to acquire key supplies and medicines since 30 to 40% of the over 200 patients currently admitted are on oxygen and require expensive medication.
Last year, Kiruddu National Referral hospital received Shs 4.5bn for medicines and supplies. However, Shs 3bn was exclusively allocated for supplies related to kidney treatment called dialysis.
The remaining Shs1.5bn was allocated for other drugs. Now, Kabugo says non-communicable diseases are exhausting the budget because the number of patients referred to the facility keeps doubling making it difficult for them to plan.
The hospital pharmacist, Fasily Lule, says some of the stock-outs at the hospital arise from failure to forecast effectively. He says medicines for tuberculosis, oral morphine, malaria and HIV shouldn’t be running out because they are acquired free of charge.
Lule says they target to serve about a thousand patients annually but the hospital received around 2,000 patients last year. With such numbers, he says, they decided to ration the drugs especially those for hypertension, which are on high demand due to huge numbers.
If a patient needs drugs for 10 days, he or she gets half of the dose. But, even with this trick in addition to borrowing from sister hospitals, patients gobbled up 98% of the hospital’s annual allocation for drugs by March 3, 2020.
The hospital has run out of emergency medicines and is currently referring patients to private pharmacies. The drug stock out isn’t the only challenge the hospital is grappling with. Dr Kabugo says they have been recording a monthly shortfall of Shs 10-15 million brought on by a water bill of Shs 15 million and power bill of Shs 45 million.
He blames the high water bill on the dialysis treatment. The hospital handles up to 50 patients and each requires not less than 120 litres of water for kidney cleansing.