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Paidamoyo Chipunza and Sibongile Maruta
Government has appealed to The Global Fund to use savings from the previous grant towards construction of National Pharmaceutical (NatPharm)’s new state-of-the-art warehouse.

The Global Fund, which is fully referred to as Global Fund to Fight Aids Tuberculosis and Malaria, is an international partnership between Governments, civil society, the private sector and people affected by the diseases.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of the new warehouse held in Harare yesterday, Health and Child Care Minister Dr David Parirenyatwa said construction work should begin immediately to ensure completion within the stipulated 18 months.

“This is going to be a big, state-of-the-art warehouse, and it is something to be proud of,” said Dr Parirenyatwa.We appeal for a waiver from The Global Fund to allow us to use money from the savings we made in the previous grant to begin construction of this warehouse.” The warehouse, which has a capacity to accommodate 22 000 pallets of medicines, requires an estimated $23 million. The current structure can only accommodate nine pallets of medicines.

NatPharm chief executive officer Mrs Flora Sifeku said there was need to construct a bigger and modern warehouse to ensure efficiency in the drug supply system. Mrs Sifeku said with the new warehouse, recording, storage and stocktaking is going to be easy as everything will be computerised.

“We were having difficulties in recording what is in stock and what is out of stock as everything was done manually. We anticipate the new warehouse to be equipped with technological systems, which enable us to log-in and log-out as stock comes in,” said Mrs Sifeku.

Speaking at the same occasion, Global Fund representative Mr Mark Edington said his organisation was interested in high performance, resilient and strong supply chain of medicines, and the NatPharm warehouse falls within that vision. He said The Global Fund was committed to continue supporting Zimbabwe in achieving this goal. NatPharm procures and stores drugs on behalf of Government institutions.