DOH: Only 0.03% of drugs, items flagged by COA were expired

The Department of Health (DOH) said Wednesday that only 0.03% of the P7.4 billion worth of medicines and other inventory items flagged by state auditors for being expired and undistributed have actually expired.

DOH made the clarification after the Commission on Audit (COA), in its 2022 annual audit report, said that drugs, medicines, and other types of inventories amounting to P7,430,901,637 were expired, near expiry, damaged, overstocked, understocked, delayed, or undistributed.

Of these items, P2.3 million were expired inventories, P203.6 million were overstocked, P5 billion were slow-moving, and P1.5 billion were undistributed.

“The DOH clarifies that of the PHP 7.43B (PHP 7,430,901,637.34) worth of inventories tagged by the COA in their audit report, only 0.03% were found to have actually expired, while only 1.16% were found to be near expiry,” it said in a statement.

“On the other hand, 95.81% of the cited amount are not expired and only pertains to slow-moving/undistributed/overstocked inventories,” it added.

As to the expired vaccines, the agency said it was found that most of them were stocks in DOH hospitals which were unutilized “due to the lower number of patients going to hospitals fearing COVID-19.”

The rest of the expired stocks in DOH regional offices, meanwhile, were undistributed “due to refusal of implementing units to accept new stocks citing sufficiency of existing stocks.”

DOH said it has already distributed 86% of the inventories to Centers for Health Development (CHD) and other health facilities as of September 8.

The remaining 14% of the inventories tagged as slow-moving/undistributed/overstocked are set to be delivered before the year ends, it added.

The Health Department also said that the COA report focused on the proper disposal of expired drugs and medicines, and not on the expiration “given that the hospitals/facilities were able to justify the cause/s of the expiration, therefore, those were not highlighted in the audit.”

According to COA, deficient procurement planning and poor distribution and monitoring systems resulted in “wastage of government funds and resources.”

“Overall, the problem exposed Management’s inability to safeguard, manage, and utilize health funds and resources economically and effectively,” it said.

To help address issues regarding supply chain and asset management, DOH said that Secretary Ted Herbosa has directed the creation of an “asset management task force.”—AOL, GMA Integrated News