THE Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said almost 96 percent of the P7.4 billion worth of drugs and medicines cited in a Commission on Audit (COA) report are not yet expired but admitted that they are overstocked.
In a statement, the DOH explained that a large majority of the P7,430,901,637.34 amount flagged by state auditors may still be used as they are not yet expired.
“95.81 percent of the cited amount are not expired and only pertains to slow-moving/undistributed/overstocked inventories,” said the DOH, adding this means that only a small portion of the COA-cited amount involved expired or nearly expiring medicines and drugs.
“Only 0.03% were found to have actually expired, while only 1.16% were found to be near expiry,” it said.
In its 2022 audit report on the DOH, government auditors said they discovered drugs, medicines, and other types of inventories with a total value of P7,430,901,637.34 that were already “expired and/or near expiry, damaged, overstocked, excessive, understocked, slow-moving, undistributed.”
For the expired medicines, the DOH explained that most of the expired medicines are stocks in DOH hospitals, which were unutilized due to the lower number of patients going to hospitals due to the fear of COVID-19.
It also said that the rest of the expired medicines and supplies were stocks in DOH regional offices which remained undistributed due to refusal of implementing units to accept new stocks citing sufficiency of existing stocks.
On the other hand, for those that have yet to expire, the DOH said it has already distributed 86 percent to its regional offices and other health facilities.
Additionally, the remaining 14 percent of the medicines tagged as slow-moving/undistributed/overstocked are already scheduled to be delivered in the second half of 2023.
In response to the COA finding and to prevent a repeat of the situation, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa has ordered the creation of an Asset Management Task Force to “ensure that issues with regard to supply chain and asset management like these are planned for, immediately addressed, and prevented.”
