Parliament was informed that Jinja Regional Referral Hospital has kept expired drugs for 8 years in its stores, prompting some MPs to demand the reprimand of National Medical Stores for failing to collect expired drugs, despite hospital notifications.
The details are contained in the report by the Public Accounts Committee on the Auditor General’s report for December 2023, which 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 room as the expired drugs.
The committee report tabled before parliament by Butambala county mp Muwanga Kivumbi noted 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.
In the report, the Hospital administrations attributed the presence of expired drugs on the failure by NMS to collect expired medications 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.
The Public Accounts Committee report 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 mixing up when dispensing. The Accounting Officers should consider minimizing the expiry of medicines through redistribution to other needy health units.” Said the report.
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