The cost of medical supplies items purchased over a period of 06 years from 2011 without the recommendation of the Formulary Revision Committee amounts to Rs. 10,193 million, the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has revealed.
Issuing a statement, the Parliament said it was revealed that 4,619 medical supplies worth Rs. 10,193 million had been purchased during the period from 2011 to 2016 without the recommendation of the Formulary Revision Committee.
The revelation was made at the COPA meeting held on Wednesday (17) under the chairmanship of Prof. Tissa Vitarana.
This Committee Meeting was held to review the Auditor General’s Special Audit Report dated 14th March 2018 on the Medical Supply Process carried out by the Medical Supplies Division of the Ministry of Health, Nutrition, and Indigenous Medicine.
It was revealed that although the number of medical supplies items consumed by many countries in the world was very low, 19,844 medical supplies items had been consumed in the island by the year 2017.
The committee also revealed that 8,945 “Trastuzumab injection 440mg with solvent in 20ml vials” called “Herticad” had been purchased from one supplier in the local market on 14 occasions in 2018 and 2019 at a cost of Rs. 891 million. The committee had to bear an additional cost of Rs. 230.9 million due to the rejection of the minimum bid in these transactions.
The Committee on Public Accounts also inquired from the Ministry of Production, Supply, and Regulation of Pharmaceuticals regarding the additional expenditure of Rs. 5,166 million during the period of 10 years from 2007 to 2016. This situation has arisen due to the delay in the procurement process and the need to procure medical supplies from the local market to avoid the shortage of medical supplies.
The National Audit Office pointed out at the Committee on Public Accounts that it has been confirmed that medical supplies enter the country annually without confirmation of the quality of medical supplies and that the damage caused to patients cannot be quantified.
The Committee also questioned the officials regarding the fact that no action had been taken to improve the physical and human resources status of the Drug Quality Assurance Laboratory in 2016.
The Committee focused on a number of issues such as failure to introduce a methodology to test the quality of a sample of all purchased medical supplies, deficiencies in the recovery process for substandard medical supplies, issuance of substandard medical supplies to patients, non-printing of the emblem of Sri Lanka on medical supply containers, non-maintenance of medical supply stores, non-issuance of GRNs immediately upon receipt of medical supplies, failure to properly store and distribute medical supplies received as donations, expiration of medical supplies, non-updating of Medical Supply Management Information System (MSMIS).
State Ministers Lasantha Alagiyawanna, Dr. Sudarshani Fernandopulle, Prasanna Ranaweera, Members of Parliament Tissa Attanayake, Ashok Abeysinghe, Niroshan Perera, Dr. Upul Galappaththi, Cader Masthan, and Weerasumana Weerasinghe were present. In addition, officials from several institutions including the Ministry of Health were also present at the occasion. (NewsWire)
