By Nathan Eyagu
SOROTI: Authorities at Soroti regional referral hospital have today arrested two male hawkers for allegedly selling herbal medicines at the government facility.
The two were identified as Frank Agaba aged 23 years from Bweyogerere,Kampala, a munyankole by tribe and Anastus Twesimire, 27 years from Jinja Mufubira in Jinja City.
According to Bezy Omoya, the hospital principal administrator at SRRH, the suspects were intercepted and arrested by police guarding the facility at 02:00pm allegedly selling medicines at the wards claiming to be workers from Beifers business stores located in cornerstone plaza in Kampala.
He further explained that selling and hawking of private herbal medicines in government health facilities is prohibited as it has implications of interfering with the medicines being prescribed to the patients and also impling that the government has failed to provide health care to the people.
He noted that they are not even sure whether the medicines have been approved by the National drug authority because they did not show any document of being licensed although approved herbalists are only allowed to advertise and sell their products from out door facilities but not inside the hospital.
“This particular case of the hawkers being intercepted and arrested from the hospital is the third one now, the first was in the month of May, second in around November and this particular on today 23rd,August,2023.
The two were later handed to Police at Soroti central police station.
However, efforts to get a comment from SP Gregory Oscar Ageca was not possible by the time of filing this story.
