Medical supply procurement under COPA microscope

Rs.10.2 million worth of medical supplies (over 4,600 items) had been purchased from 2011 to 2016 without the recommendation of the Formulary Revision Committee, the Committee on Parliamentary Accounts (COPA) has found.

Parliament sources said on Friday that the irregularity was uncovered at a Prof. Tissa Vitarana chaired meeting on Wednesday to review the Auditor General’s Special Audit Report dated March 14, 2018 on the Medical Supply Process carried out by the Medical Supplies Division of the Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine.

Parliament sourced said that it was revealed that although the number of medical supplies items consumed by many countries in the world was very low, 19,844 such items had been consumed in the island in 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 country had to bear an additional cost of Rs. 230.9 million due to the rejection of the minimum bid in these transactions.

COPA 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 representatives of the National Audit Office pointed out that the investigation confirmed that medical supplies enter the country annually without quality confirmation and that the damage caused to patients cannot be quantified.

COPA also questioned officials regarding why no action had been taken to improve the physical and human resources status of the Drug Quality Assurance Laboratory in 2016; and why 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 at the meeting.

Officials from several institutions including the Ministry of Health were also present.