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Gov’t dumped $5.9B in expired drugs between 2022-2024
Kaieteur News-Guyana’s health sector continues to suffer from wanton waste as billions of dollars in expired drugs are being dumped every year.
Opposition Member of Parliament, Volda Lawrence
Former Health Minister under the A Partnership for National Unity Government and Opposition Member of Parliament, Volda Lawrence in her budget debates presentation last week sought to shed light on the issue.
She blamed the continued wastage on a lack of transparency in the procurement of drugs and medical supplies. “Mr. Speaker, what has happened to the glorious promise to the Guyanese people of promoting good governance including openness, transparency and commitment to improve public accountability?” Lawrence queried.
She stressed that increasing amounts of expired medicines in the health sector. According to Lawrence “the Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony claimed that he inherited approximately 1.6 million expired items valued $742M and an additional $200 in items was projected to expire in December 2020. “Well, Mr. Speaker, time has spoken so let’s look at the wastage. The Auditor General said that for the period January 2022-June 2024, Guyana threw away some $5.974 B in expired drugs.”
To compound the issue, the Opposition MP noted that overpayments to contractors and dumping of expired drugs amounted to some $ 9.413 billion dollars. “Mind you Sir, this amount of $9.413 billion dollars only represents two areas of the entire budget. I’m calling for investment in drugs and medical supplies to be quantified and managed correctly. It is my hope that we will see some expedient action in the area of digitalising the health sector systems which we heard of since 2023,” Lawrence said.
She said in the interim the minister may want to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) like the USA, UK, Spain, Italy and endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which can provide data faster and more accurately, she said.
(Gov’t dumped $5.9B in expired drugs between 2022-2024)
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