The Auditor General’s report for December 2023 has revealed that Jinja Regional Referral Hospital has kept expired drugs for eight years in its stores, thus prompting Members of Parliament to demand for the reprimand of National Medical Stores (NMS) for the failure to collect expired drugs, despite notifications from hospitals.
The report established that many public hospitals are grappling with huge volumes of expired drugs, yet in some facilities, the active drugs are stored in the same rooms as the expired drugs.
“Fort portal did not provide values of the expired drugs or budget for their disposal, Mubende had 2,322kgs unvalued expiries sent to NMS for destruction, Moroto had expiries worth Shs9,063,085 kept together with live medicines in the same stands in stores same as Entebbe, Soroti and Jinja did not have records of types, expiry dates and quantities of drugs that were expired while Jinja had 16 sacks of expired medicines since 2016,” noted Muwanga Kivumbi, Chairperson PAC.
The Hospital administrations attributed the presence of expired drugs to the failure by NMS to collect expired drugs for disposal or have them returned on delivery despite the notices.
NMS was also faulted by the hospitals for the supply of incomplete combinations of reagents as for the laboratory and changes in fixed drug combinations for treatment e.g. ARVs and TB, where certain drugs are discarded in treatment regimens leading to non-use, as well as the supply of vital drugs in dire need with a short shelf life.
“It is the sole duty of the National Drug Authority to collect expired medicines and forward them to the National Drug Authority for destruction. Thus, having been notified by the hospitals to pick the medicines for disposal to no action e.g. un-picked expired stock at Jinja for 8 years shows total and intentional laxity by NMS to act. Non-valuation and separation of expired drugs from the good stock is a violation of Chapter 8.2 of the Ministry of Health of Health essential medicines and health supplies management Manual (EMHS) 2018. The practice also curtails estimation of value lost and if mixed up and consumed can lead to health hazards,” noted Muwanga.
The Public Accounts Committee recommended NMS should be held liable for the anomaly and be reprimanded by the Secretary to Treasury for failure to collect expired medicines for disposal and for being non-responsive.
“Accounting Officers should designate separate storerooms for expired goods to avoid mix up at the time of dispensing. The Accounting Officers should consider minimizing expiry of medicines through redistribution to other needy health units.”
