The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) is once again on the spot after the UN-backed Global Fund revealed that goods sent to the authority disappeared from the warehouses under unclear circumstances.
Global Fund, which plays a key role in the financing the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, raised a red flag after it found out that 908,000 mosquito nets, 1.1 million condoms and tuberculosis drugs worth Sh10 million were missing.
“Kemsa has poor internal controls on warehousing and inventory management resulting in 16% differences in batch numbers verified and discrepancies of 908,000 long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) between actual and expected stock balances,” read the Global Fund’s report.
The lost medicines are believed to have been stolen and resold on the black market and to private chemists.
The report further accuses KEMSA of lacking the ability to properly monitor the distribution of its drugs and commodities, thereby making the agency vulnerable to theft.
“Kemsa’s Nairobi warehouse was overcrowded with commodities during our visit, making it difficult to trace commodities,” said the report.
Moreover, the Fund also suspects that there are fake suppliers demanding Sh1.66 billion from KEMSA.
An audit by Global Fund shows that the agency over-quoted the value of medicines by KSh640 million, with some types of drugs having been inflated 100 times.
Further, some of the drugs, which were bought by cash from Global Fund, expired despite there being a shortage in government hospitals across the country.
The Global Fund’s anti graft unit Office of the Inspector General has called for a further investigation into KEMSA dealings, a move that could put the Fund’s Ksh50.6 billion funding to Kenya at risk.
The Fund - whose principal donors are the US, France, Germany and Japan - has disbursed over Ksh 150 billion to Kenya since 2003 to help fight diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS and the recent Covid-19.
The revelations come as KEMSA fights to redeem itself after the State agency was involved in a tender fraud over the procurement of Covid-19 medical supplies in 2020.
In 2019, the United States Agency for Development (USAID) called out KEMSA for lack of integrity and corruption that denied patients 1.5 million HIV lifesaving drugs.
The United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US had issues with KEMSAa's corruption that escalated to the point of needing the President's intervention.
"We have had an issue with Kemsa, the institution responsible for the distribution, and as you know very well, concerns in particular about corruption that I know the government is working to reform," he said. "We have an obligation to our own taxpayers when we're spending their money to do it in a way that is accountable and fully transparent." said Blinken.
The USAID had a long partnership with Kenya and other countries to deal with HIV/AIDS and other debilitating diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.
