Large quantities of expired medicines have been found in a warehouse hired by the Mozambican Health Ministry, in the southern city of Matola – and nobody can explain who is responsible for allowing millions of dollars worth of drugs to deteriorate in this way.The independent television station STV visited the warehouse on Wednesday and discovered boxes full of pain-killers (Ibuprofen and paracetamol), oral rehydration salts, anti-malarial drugs (coartem), the antibiotics ampicillin and metronizadole, and even anti-retroviral drugs. Health units across the country have been complaining bitterly about shortages of medicines, yet here were box after box of medicines that had been allowed to lie in a warehouse until they passed their expiry dates. STV discovered that some of the medicines had expired five years ago.The recently appointed director of the Health Ministry’s Central Medical Stores, Paulo Nhaducuo, said the losses could be more than two million US dollars – though the full amount will not be known until an exhaustive survey of the materials in the warehouse is undertaken. He could not say who was responsible for this waste, but just blamed the problem on “management errors”, which had allowed the medicines to accumulate over years. He said the medicines are now useless and will have to be destroyed by incineration.The scandal of the Matola warehouse was uncovered because the Ministry is now taking supplies out of warehouses that it had been renting, and is transferring them to new central warehouses, owned by the Ministry, in the outlying Maputo suburb of Zimpeto.Every year the Health Ministry spends about 100 million dollars in importing medicines.
0 comentários:
Post a Comment