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Health Ministry working to minimise expiration of pharmaceuticals
The health sector is faced with a peculiar situation whereby it can rarely prevent the expiration of pharmaceuticals. However this situation is not deemed very worrisome since according to Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted the possibility of such occurrences, albeit in as small as possible quantities.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud
“We can aim for not having any expired drugs in the system, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable if we have everything being used. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I would think that we might be short-changing someone…We might not be providing everything that we should,” Dr Persaud said.
He pointed out that while the health sector might seek to ensure the availability of drugs to combat diarrhoeal cases during rainy seasons, for instance, there are times when the anticipated number of cases are below expectation, leaving the health sector with stock that can eventually expire.
“If we don’t get the numbers we anticipated, our stock, things like oral rehydration salts and so forth, will be under-utilised and those drugs could remain with us for longer periods than they should,” Dr Persaud explained.
According to him, the health sector is in fact mandated to practice overstocking, whereby a buffer stock of at least an additional 10 per cent of the needed drugs, is available in the event that the demand exceeds expectation.
However, if the Health Ministry finds itself with a drug surplus, Dr Persaud disclosed that there are occasions when moves are made to “share with our neighbours…if we need to we give to Suriname or wherever… for example, if we have a surplus of HIV medication, TB medication things like those.”
But in order to ensure that the expiration situation is minimal, the Chief Medical Officer explained that with each cycle of supply, which could be at the least on a three-month basis, an assessment should be done to ascertain the status of drugs in stock.
“We check to see what has expired; we don’t give any allowance to use it a few days beyond the expiration date. Once it meets the date, we put it aside, if we see something dated January 2014 it’s off the shelf; that rigidity applies right now,” Dr Persaud asserted.
He explained that such procedures would entail the pharmacy manager of any public health facility giving notice to the Food and Drug Department of the expired status of drugs, after which an inspection of them is carried out. In addition to tabulating the expired drugs, the Food and Drug Department is also tasked with issuing a destruction order which will give allowance for them to be destroyed in an approved manner.
While some pharmaceuticals must be incinerated, Dr Persaud said that there are others that must be neutralised or simply disposed of at a landfill site.
The CMO’s explanation was forthcoming even as he sought to respond to recent reports carried by this publication relating to the dumping of pharmaceuticals at the Agricola Health Centre. According to him, while the Health Ministry cannot profess to always doing things in the ideal manner, the drugs that were taken to the Health Centre had not reached the stage of disposal.
He disclosed that while the drugs might have reached a state of expiration they were merely being relocated to the Health Centre for storage, ahead of them being sorted to ascertain what possible action must be taken. The drugs were formerly stored at the Ministry’s Kingston, Georgetown bond and were in fact donated items.
“They weren’t being dumped because all of our inventory items including pharmaceuticals have to go through a process before they are dumped, and verification must be done by the Food and Drug Department of those items before they are discarded,” Dr Persaud said.
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