Only 0.3% of medicines expired – DOH

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday clarified that not all of the P7.4 billion worth of drugs tagged by the Commission on Audit (COA) have expired.

“Only 0.03 percent were found to have actually expired while only 1.16 percent are near expiry,” the DOH reported.

Most of the expired medicines, DOH said, are stocks in government-run hospitals, which were unutilized due to the lower number of patients going to hospitals fearing COVID-19, while the rest were in DOH regional offices, which remained undistributed due to refusal to accept new stocks, citing sufficiency of existing inventory.

The DOH explained that the COA findings focused on the proper disposal of expired drugs and medicines and not on expiration per se, noting that the concerned hospitals and health facilities were able to justify the causes of the expiration, but those were not highlighted in the audit.

Some 95.81 percent of the cited amount is not expired and only pertains to slow moving, undistributed or overstocked inventories, the DOH said.

Concerning the slow-moving inventories, DOH said that 86 percent have been distributed to centers for health development and other health facilities. The remaining 14 percent of the inventories tagged as slow-moving/undistributed/overstocked are scheduled to be delivered in the last quarter of 2023.

Health Secretary Ted Herbosa previously ordered the creation of an asset management task force in the DOH to ensure that issues like these are planned for, immediately addressed and prevented.

Bivalent doses

Over 13,000 doses of bivalent COVID-19 vaccines are still available for eligible population, the DOH said.

As of Sept. 8, DOH said, a total of 13,394 bivalent doses are yet to be used. About half of the remaining doses are allocated in the Bicol region (2,607), Calabarzon  (2,354) and Mimaropa (2,223).

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao still has 1,630 doses while the National Capital Region has 1,137.

Of the 388,980 bivalent vaccines donated by the Lithuanian government, 366,561 doses have been used.

“(This) accounts for 94.23 percent of the allocated vaccines from the Lithuanian government,” the DOH noted.