Half of Kenyan Hospitals Stuffed With Expired Drugs

Antibiotics
Drugs

Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) requires all hospitals whether private or public to have an accurate record of all the drugs that they procure, dispense and those not yet used, to ensure potentially harmful drugs are not prescribed to patients. Substandard medicines and those that affect patients negatively are also to be put on record.

A report by Kenya Harmonised Health Facility Assessment for the year 2018/19 has revealed that only 54 percent of health facilities, both public and private have kept the record and have the right channels to dispose of off expired drugs that pose a threat to human life.

The study took pharmaceutical data from 2,505 out of the 2,732 health facilities countrywide. Of these, drug outlets in Nairobi, Nyeri, Migori and Garissa were the worst performing in keeping records of the volumes of pharmaceutical products received and dispensed, and the balances.

“Pharmacy reporting systems were performing slightly below expected standards as all pharmacies are to have systems to manage drugs in terms of expiries and adverse events reporting,” read the report.

The study revealed that 78 percent of health institutions stored pharmaceutical commodities in an inappropriate condition. Only 10 percent of the visited private facilities met the standard storage conditions set while secondary and tertiary hospitals met about 50 percent of the storage requirements.

World Health Organisation (WHO) provides that a robust management system should give reliable information on drug consumption data so as to be able to gauge demand from patients or make projections. On the good side, both secondary and tertiary health facilities reported a good performance across all variables