Supply of drugs for health sector “on track” for 2022 – CMO

Chief Medical Officer, Dr Narine Singh has positioned that the supply of drugs and other pharmaceutical supplies for the public healthcare sector is on track for the year, thereby resulting in a smooth flow of operations.
This was shared during an engagement with media operatives on Friday, on the sidelines of an event.

Generally, complaints would emerge from the sector about the shortage of medicines at hospitals while spoilage would also emerge as another concern. However, Dr Singh relayed that there have been minimal supplies that have to be disposed of due to expiry dates or spoilage.
“Every year, there’s some amount of expiries of drugs that don’t get utilised because it came in too late. Those are a small amount that needs to be disposed of. The supply of drugs is on track for this year. The budget, many of the tenders went out and we started receiving those supplies. Some of them are standard, so presently, most of the tenders went out for all the drug supplies. We’re just in the phase of receiving them in different batches,” he disclosed.
In 2021, an audit into the health sector found $1.1 billion in expired medical drugs, purchased since the last Administration. The Government would have ordered the audit after over $10 billion in expired pharmaceuticals had to be dumped. The expired drugs were purchased under the last coalition Government and uncovered when the new Administration took office in August 2020.
At that time, the Health Ministry had to dump over 300 truckloads of expired medication from the Materials Management Unit – the central storage bond of the Health Ministry.
Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony was quoted as saying that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government inherited a “crisis” in relation to the quantity of expired medication being stored at MMU, and within five years, the Health Ministry had to dump billions worth of expired drugs and materials because of mismanagement.
The Government also entered the office to find shortages of some 156 key medicines and other supplies – which were on the zero-stock level.
To immediately rescue this situation, the Government had to allocate $3.2 billion to make the emergency purchase of drugs and medical supplies. Over $14 billion was also injected into the 2021 budget to purchase drugs.
With a new approach and intervention, Guyana’s supply of pharmaceuticals in the public system was stabilised, providing facilities with the necessary drugs to treat patients and eliminating wastage.