THE coalesced Opposition parties of A Partnership For National Unity and the Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) has alleged at a press conference yesterday that $280M worth of expired drugs and medical supplies had been destroyed by the state in 2014.Dr. George Norton of the APNU+AFC coalition said it was only recently discovered that that quantity of medical supplies and drugs had been destroyed in 2014.

He contended that sole sourcing of drugs and medical supplies by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the GPHC has incurred a lot of damage to the system, and he promised that that practice would definitely be abolished under an APNU+AFC Government.

According to Dr. Norton, “Since 2005, the Government has been practically sole sourcing medical supplies and medication to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and the Ministry of Health (MoH), and that is something that we will certainly put an end to.”

He pointed out that an APNU+AFC Government would award tenders for the supply of drugs and medical supplies in keeping with the procedure and process established by the National Procurement and Tender Board.

“We will try to give all the companies a level playing field, because we have known of cases where Government was purchasing medication from this particular company at very high prices, when they could have gotten from another company at a very low cost,” Dr. Norton declared.

MINISTER’S REPLY
But when contacted by the Guyana Chronicle for a response, Health Minister Dr. Bheri Ramsaran disclosed that he had never heard of the said figure. He, however, declared: “Yes! From time to time, we do have to get rid of drugs, because it is dictated by an international law!”

He disclosed that, because a sluggish system obtains for the removal of expired drugs and medical supplies, over the years, expired materials accumulate and add up to an excessive sum.

“The Opposition were disingenuously misinformed, because some reputable NGOs bring in a lot of near-expired drugs and it is then passed on to (the Health Ministry and the GPHC); therefore, all of that, when accumulated, totals up to a large sum,” Minister Ramsaran disclosed.