Was the destruction of drugs worth Rs. 44 by KMSCL avoidable?
4 Dec, 2013
The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that the Kerala Medical Services Corporation Limited (KMSCL), which is the central procurement agency for all essential drugs for public health care institutions under the government, has destroyed medicines worth more than Rs. 44 lakh in the past three years.
The reply to the application states that the corporation has currently medicines worth Rs. 98 crores including antibiotics, drugs for respiratory tract, antiviral and Parkinson’s drugs, cardiovascular drugs, gynaecology drugs etc. It says that in 2011-12, KMSCL disposed of drugs worth around Rs. 29 lakh because they had crosses their expiry dates.
The reply also showed that the wastage of drugs has been continuously increasing for past few years. Drugs worth Rs. 5.5 lakh were disposed of in 2009-10 which increased to Rs. 9.71 lakh during 2010-11. The data shows that there was an increase of 197 percent in the value of expired medicines during 2011-12 amounting to Rs. 28.91 lakh.
The RTI reply attributes the drug wastage to their passing the expiry dates but the crirics have pointed that such huge wastage would rather have been caused by the failure of the corporation in timely dissemination of the drugs.