(Trinidad Guardian) Over the last five years some TT$63 million of taxpayers’ money has gone down the drain as pharmaceuticals ordered for public health institutions had to be discarded because they had expired.
This was one of the matters raised at yesterday’s Joint Select Committee (JSC) meeting in Parliament as National Insurance Property Development Company (NIPDEC) general manager David Benjamin and head of the Pharmaceutical Board Marisa Austin appeared before the JSC. Nipdec has the responsibility for ordering pharmaceuticals for public health institutions.
The revelation came even as patients at several health institutions complained about the shortage of basic pharmaceuticals which relatives have to purchase from private pharmacies. Austin said there were several factors which accounted for this wastage. Firstly, she said Nipdec not having direct access to inventory was an issue.
“Drugs stored at the RHA (regional health authorities) level, we, Nipdec, we do not have direct access to the stock at hand or the inventory.
“We are aware of the returns when they are sent to central stores, either within two or three months of the expiry date and at that point in time we are unable to redistribute the stock. Secondly, we have had instances, particularly in the non-pharmaceutical industry, where the decisions taken at the evaluation committee are not adhered to by the users in the institution,” Austin said. Another issue, she said, which was very prevalent was that they often stocked items, like generic drugs, which very often ended up not being used by the medical institutions.
“We do not have the authority to force the user at the institution to utilise the drugs. We have the option of going to the Ministry of Health, which strongly supports our initiatives to try to move the stock, but without a nationwide health information system where we could actually see the inventory levels at the institutions, we are actually in the dark,” Austin said.
She added, “So we are not aware that these large quantities…sometimes when we speak about stock out and institutions, it is not necessarily that there is a stock out but where the drugs are being stored it is not equitably distributed.”
On what was being done by Nipdec to redistribute drugs before expiration, Austin said the company had put several measures in place, including improved co-ordination with various bodies including the pharmacists.
“And most recently, for the central nervous system drugs, we have discovered that while we may not have stock at central stores, there is a lot of availability within the region,” Austin said.
She said, however, that competitive tender provided the most value for money.
Regarding the shortage of cancer drugs, she said this again spoke to the issue of funding, as the medication was provided by international suppliers. To ensure there was no shortage of stock, Austin said adequate funding must be provided on time, but gave the assurance that in the interim, procurement of the drugs was being done for a longer period.
Asked what measures were in place to ensure doctors were not taking drugs from public hospitals to use in their private practice, health sector advisor Asif Ali said he could not say.
