FDA destroys Tamale Teaching Hospital expired drugs

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has destroyed expired drugs estimated at GH¢400,000.00.

The drugs, which included assorted medicines, injectables and painkillers, were destroyed at the Fuo landfill site in Tamale last Friday.

The drugs were retrieved from the medical stores of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH).

Disposal process

The Northern Regional Director of the FDA, Mr Martin Kusi, who led the exercise, told newsmen that certain processes had to be followed before the disposal of the expired drugs.

That, he said, included the setting up of a committee to take inventory of the expired drugs to ensure that they tally with the records provided.

Mr Kusi explained that the inventory of the expired drugs at the hospital was to avoid the repetition of an incident that occurred in 2015 when a quantity of expired drugs picked by the FDA for safe disposal had to be brought back because the documentation of the drugs was not done properly.

Monitoring

He stated that the disposal of expired drugs at the health facilities was supposed to be a yearly activity and stated that the FDA was going to monitor the hospitals to ensure that every expired drug was periodically disposed of properly.

Recall

Early this year, there were media reports of the TTH administering expired drugs to patients at the hospital.

This caused the FDA to move in to investigate the matter, leading to the discovery of a quantity of expired drugs at the medical stores of the hospital.

The hospital authorities denied that it was administering expired drugs to patients at the facility and that it was the management of the TTH that rather wrote to the FDA to help the hospital to safely dispose of the expired drugs.