KEMSA To Temporarily Shut Down Nairobi Warehouse To Take Stock

The closure will take effect from July 1 to July 8, 2022.
“During this period, all receipts and dispatches of medical supplies will be suspended. Only emergency cases shall be attended to,” KEMSA said in a statement.
According to KEMSA, the facilities’ operations will start up again on July 11, 2022.Following the discovery of a number of situations in which medical supplies mysteriously disappeared from KEMSA’s storage, the organization has recently faced criticism.For instance, in March, KEMSA was unable to account for 1.1 million condoms, 908,000 mosquito nets, or Ksh. 10 million worth of tuberculosis medications that went missing from its stores.

The Global Fund, a Swiss-based organization that provides funding to governments to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria, asserts that the medications may have been stolen and then sold to private pharmacies.

According to the organization’s audit, KEMSA overestimated the worth of medications by Ksh. 640 million as well.

“Kemsa has poor internal controls on warehousing and inventory management, resulting in 16 per cent differences in batch numbers verified, and discrepancies of 908,000 long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) between actual and expected stock balances,” the Global Fund said then.
After the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) revealed “criminal” behavior regarding the procurement of Covid-19 kits by KEMSA in 2020, the company found itself at the center of yet another corruption issue.

The anti-graft organization also reported a Ksh. 7.8 billion “irregular spending.”