(MENAFN- The Post)
AN ambitious programme to vaccinate thousands of babies in Lesotho is headed for a spectacular failure after the government allegedly failed to procure enough syringes for the programme.
The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is critical to ensure all children are vaccinated against tuberculosis and other mycobacterial infections.
We understand that the vaccine is usually given to babies soon after birth and about up to six months.
Without the vaccine, thousands of children will be at risk of developing tuberculosis or other mycobacterial infections.
As reported elsewhere in this issue, the vaccination programme has basically been stopped due to a lack of syringes.
Yes, you read that well: a lack of syringes.
If that position is correct, then we find it completely unacceptable.
Selibe Mochoboroane, who is in charge of the Health Minister, has over the years painstakingly built a reputation as an energetic man with a forceful personality. He has projected himself as a man who gets things done.
His visits to health centres countrywide were in line with that well-manicured perception that he wants to jerk up an anaemic health delivery system that had for years fallen into decay.
Mochoboroane's visits, while good for the public relations cameras and his own image as a man who delivers the goods, are simply not enough. He needs to ensure that health centres have the basic equipment to get things done.
Lesotho cannot afford to continue relying on donors to get things done. Over 50 years after independence, it is time it weans itself off donors if the country is to be self-sufficient.
Our health delivery system has over decades relied on international partners to provide critical services to Basotho. We use clinics and hospitals built by the Americans and the Chinese. Our medications to combat HIV and AIDS and other illnesses are handouts from the United States and other key partners.
While we are grateful for these handouts and donations, it is critical that we as a people begin a gradual process to wean ourselves from these international partners.
That is what sovereignty should mean for us as a people.
We find the explanation that the syringes were“supposed to come from a donor” totally untenable and unacceptable. In fact, such an excuse would suggest we now have a pathetic sense of entitlement as a people. That would be tragic.
It is a mindset that the bureaucrats within the government must quickly get rid off.
Lesotho must begin a process to wean itself off donors. That means the government allocating more resources to the Ministry of Health so that it can take care of its own people.
But the problem might not just about a low budgetary allocation. It could be a clear case of sheer mismanagement within the ministry with precious resources being squandered.
Reports by the Public Accounts Committee have over the years highlighted the rampant cases of mismanagement and looting of public funds by civil servants. Very little has been done to plug the holes.
Those that have been implicated in the plundering of resources have been allowed to go scot-free. We are still to see criminals who looted state coffers being prosecuted to finality.
Until this is done, rotten individuals within the civil service will continue to plunder state coffers knowing full well that they are likely to get away with it. Only when the government begins to plug the holes, will key resources begin to be channeled towards the Ministry of Health to procure basics such syringes and medicines for the betterment of Basotho.
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