Govt. begins dumping over $742M worth of expired drugs left by Coalition

Nov 21, 2020 News

Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony

Kaieteur News – The process of dumping over $742M worth of expired drugs by the Ministry of Health (MOH) has begun since Thursday.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony who added that the drugs would have cost millions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted.
Kaieteur News understands that the disposal was carried out by the MOH’s Materials Management Unit (MMU) and it would cost approximately $3M.
According to a spokesman of the Ministry, the drugs were being housed at their Diamond MMU, prior to their disposal. It was also explained that the drugs were no longer fit for human consumption and they were taking up 60 percent of the storage space at the Diamond MMU. The ministry had no choice but to dump them.
In September, during his 2020 National Budget presentation, Minister Anthony had disclosed that upon taking office in August, the new administration had discovered approximately $742 million worth of drugs that expired in the first eight months of this year and another $200 million worth of drugs were set to expire by year-end.

The drugs being disposed (Photo Credit: DPI)

This means that the total cost of the drugs currently being dumped would’ve already increased to almost $1B.
“In addition to that, the expired drugs have been cluttering up …you would know that in the past, because the bond was cluttered, the previous government resorted to renting bond space. So, by clearing out expired drugs, we have now been able to make more space available,” Dr. Anthony said.
Additionally, it was noted that the Ministry has another storage facility outside of the Diamond MMU, which is located in Kingston.
Upon examining the storage facility, it was also found that 206 items of medicine and medical supply were out of stock and 156 medical items had a zero stock level.
These medicines included those for people with high blood pressure, heart complications, diabetes, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Tuberculosis (TB) and other illnesses.
The expired drugs have since been stocked after the government spent $3B to replenish the country’s medicine supply. These supplies are supposed to last around six months, according to the Health Minister.
The government had allocated $14.3B in this year’s budget to ensure Guyana has an adequate stock of medicines and medical supplies.
Assurance has been given by Minister Anthony that moving forward; the government will be working to ensure the procurement process of these drugs is better managed. He stated that by doing this, they will be able to minimize wastage due to expired medication.