World Health Organization recently, in writing, raised a red flag about the governance loopholes at National Drug Authority, which in Uganda, is charged with regulating the manufacturing and importation of drugs and all medicines into the country.
The WHO was concerned with the obvious conflict among some top leaders of the organization, which is the very same thing which the inspector general of government detectives, supervised by deputy IGG Ann Muhairwe, have gratefully started investigating.
The WHO was prompted by an earlier incident which involved technical staff at UNDA being put between a rock and hard place when they had to block and destroy 4.1m condoms on grounds of being found to be below the minimum quality safety standards.
A few months later another batch of 1.8m condoms was also found to be unsafe and a decision had to be taken to have them destroyed in order to protect Ugandan users.
The condoms had been imported into the country under global fund national coordinating mechanism, one of whose very important committees is headed by Dr. Medard Bitekyerezo, who controversially doubles as NDA board chairman. NDA is the regulator and actually licenses, authorizes importation of such medical products.
WHO was also concerned with the fact that the same Bitekyerezo also sits on the board of national medical stores whose work the UNDA supervises and even regulates. The same national medical stores is also represented on the NDA board, where one of its top executives sits.
WHO was also uncomfortable with the fact that the general manager for joint medical stores (JMS which procures and imports drugs for all church-owned hospitals in Uganda) sits on the UNDA board.
JMS is one of the licensees UNDA licenses, regulates and supervises and sitting on UNDA board simply places Dr. Bilbard Baguma, the JMS general manager, in a position to be his own regulator and licensor.
WHO has subsequently demanded that UNDA, which used to be the envy for the whole of Africa because of its high standards and good regulatory practices, quickly corrects this anomaly by amending the law to ensure that it’s no longer possible for entities like NMS and JMS, which it was created to regulate, to have direct representation on its board anymore.
President Museveni’s state house has become aware of the WHO concerns and now sees the ongoing comprehensive investigations by the IGG as an opportunity to expedite the amendment of the NDA Act so that such clear cut conflict of interest is quickly eliminated.
Apart from Bitekyerezo, who has made loads of money and become very rich in the 9 years he has been NDA chairman to the extent of never going back to seek his Mbarara MP seat, Dr. Hanifa Ssengendo, the wife of opposition veteran politician Latif Ssebaggala, is another NDA board member who sits on NMS’s board, which shows clear conflict of interest.