The first annual national retreat of supply chain practitioners in the public health sector opened at the SSNIT Conference Hall in Kumasi on Monday. The three-day meeting being attended by 200 procurement officers from the Ghana Health Service (GHS) is under the theme: “Improving the Image of Supply Chain Practitioners”. It would enable participants to take stock of their activities in 2007, examine strengths and weaknesses and manage challenges to chart the way forward. Opening the meeting, Mr. Addae Donkor, Director of Supplies, Stores and Drug Management (SSDM) of the GHS, said supply chain management has often been described as a major area of waste in the public sector as procurement alone forms over 70 percent of non-wage budget of health institutions. He said the value of stocks in the various regional and institutional ware houses run into several millions of Ghana Cedis and these underscored the need of the officers to be prudent in supply chain practices. Mr. Donkor said procurement and warehousing have been sadly described as “the opium of corruption” and this perception has been given credence because “our supply management practices have often been characterized by over and under invoicing, manipulation of the procurement processes, lack of transparency in the award of contracts , lack of fairness in the procurement process and other fraudulent practices”. The Director said recent health commodity pricing survey revealed varying differences in the pricing of health commodities and a follow-up check on the reasons for the phenomenal variations showed that there were varying sources for health commodities. Mr. Donkor said the Central Medical Stores (CMS), local purchases from Regional Medical Stores and institutional local purchases were some of the supply sources and thus depending on the source of supply and the negotiation capacity of the institution , the pricing may be high or otherwise. He announced that the GHS would continue to depend on the CMS as the main source of supply and to complement the efforts of the CMS and ensure regular availability of the commodities at affordable prices and that the National Framework Agreement which has received the approval from the Directors Forum would be implemented soon. Mr. Donkor called on health managers of the GHS to recognize the complementary role of the supply management practitioners and consistently plan them in all Regional and institutional training programme to upgrade their profession. He said the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have planned a series of training programmes to develop the capacities of practitioners and it would commence by the middle of March. On the low levels of salaries awarded the supply chain practitioners in the health sector salary review, he said discussions were underway with the authorities to remedy the situation. Source: GNA