28th February, 2018
The Benue House of Assembly Standing Committee on Health announced on Wednesday it had discovered expired drugs worth N73 million at the state’s Hospitals Management Board.
Its chairman, Mr Adoga Onah, who announced this during plenary, said it made the discovery in the course of its oversight duty to the board.
According to him, the expired drugs were not even procured through due process.
Onah further disclosed that efforts to get the National Agency for Foods and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to destroy the drugs had not been successful.
He expressed the fear that the drugs could get to the public domain if something urgent was not done to destroy them.
“We must move very fast and ensure that the drugs are destroyed before they cause havoc to innocent Benue residents,” he said.
The chairman blamed incessant industrial actions by doctors for the expiration of the drugs, saying that the expiry dates of some of the drugs were very close before procurement.
He deplored the poor state of the health sector and urged the state government to declare a state of emergency on all hospitals in the state.
In their contributions, a majority of the house members appealed to NAFDAC to destroy the drugs before unscrupulous politicians and pharmacists could gain access to them.
In its resolution, the House directed the board to urgently liaise with NAFDAC to destroy the expired drugs to avoid the risk of them getting to the public domain.
The House also ordered the finance ministry to release funds to the board for the running of the hospitals for effective healthcare delivery.