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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Bodoe: NIPDEC dumps $80M in expired medication

by

Dareece Polo
11 days ago
20250624
Minister of Health Dr Lackram Bodoe makes his contribution to the debate on a Motion to Adopt the Report of the Standing Finance Committee in Parliament yesterday.

Minister of Health Dr Lackram Bodoe makes his contribution to the debate on a Motion to Adopt the Report of the Standing Finance Committee in Parliament yesterday.

COURTESY: OFFICE OPF THE PARLIAMENT

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NIPDEC) has dis­posed of an es­ti­mat­ed $80 mil­lion worth of ex­pired phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals be­tween 2020 and 2025.

The star­tling fig­ure was re­vealed by Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe dur­ing yes­ter­day's Mid-Year Bud­get De­bate in Par­lia­ment. He said he re­quest­ed a re­port from NIPDEC out­lin­ing the book val­ue of both phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals dis­card­ed over the pe­ri­od.

“It speaks to a big prob­lem here in terms of sup­ply chain man­age­ment and so on. And why, in fact, so many drugs, such a high val­ue, have to be dis­posed of.”

While alarmed at what he called a waste, Bo­doe said he was equal­ly shocked by the high rent be­ing paid to store the ex­pired items. He not­ed that a por­tion of NIPDEC’s ware­house cur­rent­ly hous­es both ex­pired and ac­tive stock, with a month­ly rental fee of $123,758 paid di­rect­ly to the com­pa­ny which owns the fa­cil­i­ty.

He added that while some of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions pro­vid­ed were con­sis­tent with in­dus­try stan­dards, the sit­u­a­tion ex­posed sys­temic fail­ures.

“It point­ed to the lack of an in­te­grat­ed in­ven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tem by NIPDEC across the pub­lic health sec­tor and that would have lim­it­ed the abil­i­ty to op­ti­mise in­ven­to­ry, util­i­sa­tion and min­imise ex­pi­ra­tions. It shows that there has been an on­go­ing prob­lem which has not been fixed in the last 10 years and, Mr Speak­er. This gov­ern­ment gives the as­sur­ance that that is some­thing we are go­ing to look at in terms of fix­ing the sup­ply chain is­sues.”

Bo­doe said re­form is both nec­es­sary and forth­com­ing.

He not­ed that the health sec­tor was al­lo­cat­ed the largest share in the mid-year re­view, $728.5 mil­lion, but clar­i­fied that the fund­ing would not re­solve all out­stand­ing debts or ful­ly im­prove pub­lic health ser­vices.

“The fact is that some $688.3 mil­lion of this sum is need­ed to pay out­stand­ing bills to NIPDEC and the var­i­ous RHAs for goods and ser­vices al­ready con­sumed. But I just want to give the as­sur­ance to the pop­u­la­tion that de­spite this we will de­liv­er on our promis­es in the health sec­tor.”

He al­so de­fend­ed the re­quest for an ad­di­tion­al $353.7 mil­lion (as part of the $728.5M), say­ing it would go to­ward pay­ments for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year as well as over­due in­voic­es for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as he un­der­scored the im­pact of drug short­ages on health­care de­liv­ery.

“Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals are the lu­bri­cants that keep the en­gine of the health­care sys­tem run­ning and the knots and bolts that keep it from col­laps­ing.”

He said di­ag­nos­tic work and surg­eries are of­ten de­layed or can­celled due to sup­ply gaps, a key fail­ure he wants to ad­dress.

“What hap­pens? You have more sick pa­tients, you have longer wait­ing times for surg­eries.”

He warned that fail­ure to pay sup­pli­ers would on­ly wors­en the sit­u­a­tion, cit­ing a let­ter from NIPDEC to the Min­istry of Health’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary which flagged $623,623,540.62 in un­paid bal­ances as of Jan­u­ary 31, 2025.

Bo­doe al­so re­vealed a de­clin­ing trend in drug ex­pen­di­ture from the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund:

2015 – $617.2M

2016 – $507.4M

2017 – $531.6M

2018 – $498M

2019 – $573M

2020 – $148M

2021 – $255M

2022 – $251M

2023 – $372M

He ac­cused the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of mask­ing the drop in gov­ern­ment spend­ing with loan fi­nanc­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, six loan agree­ments to­talling near­ly $2 bil­lion were se­cured be­tween 2020 and 2023 to en­sure NIPDEC had funds to pur­chase drugs, a move he said ex­plains the fre­quent short­ages un­der the last gov­ern­ment.

As for the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), he said a com­mit­tee has been es­tab­lished to re­view and ex­pand the drug list and im­prove its ben­e­fits to cit­i­zens.

Mean­while, the RHAs cur­rent­ly re­quire $288 mil­lion to cov­er out­stand­ing debts. Bo­doe said the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) had to out­source waste re­moval due to a non-func­tion­ing in­cin­er­a­tor. He re­vealed that it now costs $32,000 to dis­pose of hu­man re­mains.

A pri­vate com­pa­ny is be­ing paid $365,000 for re­lat­ed ser­vices.

An au­to­clave is op­er­a­tional but high­ly ex­pen­sive.

A gen­er­a­tor rent­ed at $63,000 per month has so far cost tax­pay­ers over $1.5 mil­lion.

“This is cer­tain­ly an is­sue here of poor gov­er­nance, pos­si­bly cor­rup­tion and def­i­nite­ly mis­man­age­ment.”

Bo­doe al­so re­vealed that the main hos­pi­tal at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal had its roof re­fur­bished for $5.5 mil­lion, but the struc­ture is now in­fest­ed with ter­mites due to poor en­gi­neer­ing.

He not­ed that the med­ical oxy­gen gen­er­a­tor plant at SWRHA has been non­func­tion­al since 2022, forc­ing the pur­chase of oxy­gen at $225,000 per month, or $1.5 mil­lion per year. In com­par­i­son, re­pair­ing the plant would cost just $500,000.

On ser­vice hours, Bo­doe said that on­ly six health cen­tres are cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing with ex­tend­ed hours, down from 41 un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship. How­ev­er, he said the gov­ern­ment will in­crease that num­ber by six and stan­dard­ise open­ing hours from 4 to 8 Mon­day to Fri­day, and 8 to 4 on week­ends.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 36 new doc­tor po­si­tions will be cre­at­ed to help meet ser­vice de­mand.


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