Thirty Million Dollars in Medication and Medical Supplies to Be Distributed
Kevin Bernard
The Ministry of Health and Wellness recently signed tender contracts valued at thirty million dollars for the supply of medications and medical supplies. Minister of Health Kevin Bernard explained that there is a brief delay in the delivery of these items, because the contracts give suppliers thirty to sixty days to deliver. Minister Bernard says that supplies, including Tylenol, are already in country and are being processed for distribution. Here is what he told us.
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
“The issue with medical supplies is that we had some delays. We are now receiving these items in stock by suppliers. We have set out that by the end of September we should not have these issues where people are saying that they don’t have basic medications and so forth. We are receiving our items as they are coming in. I know that one of the big stories was that we don’t have Tylenol and so forth. We have Tylenol you know, but we have it in pill form. But, the liquid form has just come into country by the supplier and now that is being inspected by the Ministry of Health. Whenever a supplier brings in a product they have to be inspected and we could disperse these to the different facility.”
Paul Lopez
“If our suppliers are not delivering fast enough, shouldn’t we change our suppliers for suppliers that are more reliable?”
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
“It is not suppliers are not delivering on time. Remember we just signed tender contracts about a month or so, and so the leave time for delivery was between thirty to sixty days. So that created sort of a delay. But, remember what led to many of the other issues was the previous tender where we had to reject almost two million dollars worth of a specific supplier of products because the Ministry couldn’t accept the quality of product that was being delivered. So, that even compounded the problem. It is something that was happening way before even before the previous administration. We have put an end to that. That is the reason why when we did this tender, we spoke about quality. We spoke about value for money. We also spoke about timely delivery. That is what we are going to improve. When we start to receive products, you shouldn’t hear in the next three months you have this problem.”
Paul Lopez
“How much did we spend on this recent procurement?”
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
“The tender, you are talking about a tender of almost thirty million dollars. It is medication and medical supplies.”
