Kawempe National Referral Hospital is still trapped with a stockpile of expired drug supplies for more than a year.
According to the Auditor General’s report for the Financial Year that ended June 30th, 2021, 36 out of the 74 items observed at the fact had expired by the end of December 2020 representing 49 percent.
The report noted the hospital stored expired medicines without disposing of them as required by the law contrary to Chapter 17 of the Essential Medicines and Health Supplies Manual, 2018, which requires expired and damaged stock to be destroyed.
“Under the circumstance, lives of patients are threatened by the existence of expired medicines at the hospital premises”, reads part of the Auditor General, John Muwanga’s report.
Dr. Nehemiah Katusiime Arwanire, the Executive Director of the hospital agreed with the Audit findings while appearing in parliament, saying that they wrote a letter to the National Medical Stores – NMS requesting disposal of the expired drugs but to no avail.
Dr. Arwanire, who doubles as the Accounting Officer for the facility also acknowledged that the survey carried out by the Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development endorsed the disposal of the batch of the expired drugs by the NMS.
But Sarah Achieng Opendi, the Tororo District Woman Representative and the former State Minister of Health for General Duties blamed the hospital management for negligence, a loophole that can be exploited by errant personnel to repackage and sell such drugs to the peril of the public.
The expired consignment includes laboratory reagents, pain, and palliative care, injectable medicine, anesthetics, specialist medicine, and preoperative and perioperative medication, some of which were cumulative donations since 2019 while others were requested and delivered by the NMS.
When contacted Sheila Nduhukire, the Principal Public Relations Officer of the National Medical Stores noted that it is not their mandate to dispose of expired drugs, adding that NMS only does so as a corporate social responsibility.
“Health facilities should ordinarily be paying NMS to dispose of those drugs, but because NMS does it for free, most facilities prefer this free service,” Nduhukire told Uganda Radio Network in an interview on Sunday.
She revealed that NMS always picks the expired items whenever they deliver medicines to the facilities, adding that they don’t have any record that the expired medical supplies were given to their drivers while they delivered medicines to Kawempe Hospital.
On June 1st, 2022, the administrators of the hospital came under intense scrutiny from legislators on Public Accounts Committee – PAC Central Government led by Asuman Basalirwa, who demanded the list of the expired drugs for immediate action.
Built between 2014 and 2016 by the Government with funding from the African Development Bank – AfDB, and the Nigeria Trust Fund, Kawempe National Specialized Hospital was constructed to provide quality and specialized health care in obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, pediatric surgery, adolescent health, HIV care, out-patient dental services and to enhance research and medical training in line with the Ministry of Health policy.
