The Ministry of Health plans to convene, in 2017, an international public tender for the storage and distribution of medicines.
The decision was made because the Health Ministry does not have the storage capacity in its central warehouse, and as this is an activity that requires technology to store some medicines that require special handling, according to the deputy minister of Health, Sandra Pinel.
Using funding from the Japanese government a National Laboratory of Health Monitoring will be built and equipped in Tegucigalpa.
The donation from the Japanese government amounting to $9 million, will be used to build and equip the laboratory, which will be located in the colony of La Campana in the Honduran capital.
The Ministry of Finance is negotiating with local financial institutions to place a sovereign bond maturing in three years.
The information was confirmed by officials from the Ministry of Finance during the signing of a trust between the Health Ministry and Banco de Occidente.
The Government of Honduras has overturned a drug tender for $24.4 million and announced that the purchase will be made through a trust with private banks.
Elheraldo.hn reports that "the purchase was declared unsuccessful based on the State Procurement Act being contrary to national interests in virtue of the fact that it involves the purchase of medicines at a higher price than currently received by the Health Department through a trust with the private banking system".
The second bidding process for supplying medicines for health centers is expected to start this week.
The $10 million is part of a trust given by the Honduran government to Banco de Occidente to acquire the drugs, said the head of the Central Medicine Store, Martha Escobar.
In various departments state officials are owed wages, and at the same time there is increasing pressure from others to be granted increases in their salaries.
Among the sectors that have been affected are employees in the Health department, the Honduran Telecommunications Company (Hondutel), the Public Ministry and the National Police.
To solve the problems of distributing medicines to hospitals, the Health Ministry may hire a courier company.
"We have several alternatives and it could be, for example, that transport ... rather than have being done by the Secretariat, be done using a private system, the kind of business that delivers goods," said the chief of Health, Salvador Pineda.
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