Posting Orders and Supplies of the Medical Stores Department PROMISE BROKEN

The Medical Stores Department is an independent unit of the Ministry of Health tasked with providing government hospitals and other approved non-governmental and private health facilities with good quality and affordable medical products. According to its website www.msd.or.tz their main Objective is as follows:

"To develop,maintain and manage an efficient and cost-effective system of procurement, storage and distribution of approved essential drugs and other medical supplies required for use with the country at all times."

The MSD is a commericial entity and is supposed to generate all its operational costs using receipts from sale of medical products.

According to OGP commitment regarding the MSD which is aimed at improving Transparency states as follows: 

#1.2 Posting orders and receipts of medical supplies from the Medical Stores Department (MSD) online and on notice boards.

Uhuru Blog commends the MSD for having a easily navigable and informative website. They have also done well with regards to posting all their tenders online (although could go one step further for accountability and post the results of those tenders). However, the site has a huge gap in terms of posting orders and receipts of the MSD so that civil society organizations and interested citizens can track stock movements of the MSD and whether all ordered medical supplies are accounted for. Due to the lack of such information on the website we rate thie PROMISE BROKEN until such a time when updated stock lists are posted online in machine readable format.