Expired drugs fill Bushenyi stores

Jan 07, 2010

Bushenyi district health department has been stuck with expired drugs since 1996.

By Chris Ahimbisibwe

Bushenyi district health department has been stuck with expired drugs since 1996.

The district drugs inspector, David Mukiza, said they have not taken the drugs to be destroyed by the National Drug Authority since 1996.

“The system where the National Medical Stores would supply drugs to the district even when they were about to expire is what led us to have expired drugs in stores,” Mukiza explained.

He made the disclosure recently at the launch of the public forum (baraza) for Bushenyi district at the multi-purpose hall.

The drugs, which have changed colour, have become a danger to health workers whose staff houses are near the store.

When residents asked why the drugs were expiring yet there was a shortage in health centres, the district health officer, Dr. Celestine Barigye, said they received some of the drugs from the National Medical Stores when they were about to expire.

Responding to a concern by residents about why hospital waste was being dumped in swamps, Barigye explained that the health centres in the district do not have incinerators.

“We have resorted to keeping the expired drugs and chemicals in boxes,” a nurse at a health centre said.

“We dispose of other waste materials by burning them in pit latrines,” she added.

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