The Ministry of Health last week ordered an immediate end to a scheme that required patients under the Mutuelle de Sante medical insurance scheme to buy their own medical kit, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard yesterday. The move comes after members of the parliamentary watchdog put the concern to the attention of Health Minister, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, last month, when she appeared to explain irregularities highlighted in a special value-for-money audit report of the health insurance scheme for 2009-2010 period. At the time, Dr. Binagwaho was informed that medical personnel required the scheme’s subscribers to bring their own equipment when seeking medical assistance, a situation that financially burdened patients. Appearing before the PAC along with several other officials at the ministry, the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Uziel Ndagijimana, yesterday told MPs that the issue had been addressed.Dr. Ndagijimana said: "The minister gave a directive to stop it last week. It was based on an internal hospital system that was difficult in terms of monitoring equipment and making receipts of the services provided to patients, including things like consultation and other services provided at the hospital.”"Another issue was in controlling the stock – things like syringes, gloves and others. They [hospitals] were separating things such that every service was responsible for its particular services, but it all burdened the patient.” "The hospital system had a segregation system that was an advantage to the hospital control system "but a patient would spend something like an hour going around looking for things,” Ndagijimana said. He noted that this had been halted and patients can now access services in one single location and then pay easily.In an interview, Dr. Ndagijimana told The New Times that previously, all medical kit would directly be purchased by patients at health facilities as they were readily available. "It was taking too long, and it was not appreciated by patients. However, it is because there was an intention to do internal control for those operations. However, on the other side; it was not good for the patients. So, we stopped that. We wrote to hospitals to stop that.” When Dr. Binagwaho was informed of the issue, last month, she told lawmakers that it was unacceptable and promised to look into it. At the time, she said: "It is not acceptable. We are going to look into this matter and it is important to understand that there is no official decision allowing this to be going on. To ask people to bring their own material is not official policy. So, we are going to assess what happened.”