Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Jan 12: State Health minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak Monday launched the state’s first e-tender for the Orissa State Medical Corporation here.
The Medical Corporation has been constituted to procure medicines from authorised drug companies and distribute them to the proposed Drug Distribution Centres (DDC). The DDCs will function in every district headquarters hospitals and the three medical colleges in the state.
The DDCs, to be operational by April, will provide generic drugs to the people free of cost.
“The medical corporation will immensely benefit the patients, who hitherto used to buy costly drugs in medicine stores outside the hospitals. We are the seventh such department to implement the e-tender process for procurement of various logistics. The e-tender process is transparent, efficient and competitive among the bidders. It involves no favouritism,” said the minister.
“The corporation will procure and distribute drugs to patients. It will also manage the Central drug house, the three warehouses and involve management of inventories. This will establish a link between the top houses to the bottom. It is an important assignment and we hope to manage it well,” said Roopa Mishra, mission director, National Health Mission (NHM).
“After studying the role of medical corporations in other states, we have come up with the idea after a long time. The corporation, which is a brain-child of the state government, will ensure ample stocks at DDCs along with interchange of stocks in case a medicine is out of stock in one district,’’ said Arati Ahuja, principal secretary, health and family welfare department.
Earlier, drug procurement and distribution was done by the State Drug Management Unit (SDMU) while in the current process the SDMU will only keep a vigil on the procurement to keep track of proper distribution to the DDCs.
The e-tender launch event was attended by various health department and NHM officials along with health services director Chittaranjan Nayak.
