Drugs worth ₹30cr expired at govt facility

Lucknow: Medicines worth at least Rs 30 crore expired lying at the warehouse of the Uttar Pradesh Medical Supplies Corporation Limited (UPMSCL) in Lucknow.
The magnitude of wastage is three times the budget allotted to a district hospital for procurement of medicines and includes about 239 types of medicines, even crucial ones on the Essential Drug List, saline liquids and medicines for treatment of cancer, Covid, cardiology ailments and others.
These facts have been drawn up after a detailed probe of the drug wastage at UPMSCL was ordered by deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak, which was accessed by TOI exclusively.
After a raid of the Transport Nagar-based Lucknow warehouse on May 20, the DyCM found that prima facie medicines worth Rs 16.5 crore had expired and were not returned to the drug companies before they became useless. A committee was immediately formed to look into the matter.
However, the inquiry has found out that, in fact, medicines worth Rs 29.5 crore have expired in UP, which is almost double the initial discovery. The report has now been forwarded to the DyCM but action is still pending.
“Medicines worth around Rs 29 crore have expired at the UPMSCL between 2018 and 2022. But the wastage is just about 1.8% of the total purchase of the UPMSCL,” confirmed Pranjal Yadav, health secretary in the UP medical, health and family welfare department. “Most of the wastage happened because of Covid lockdown,” said Yadav, who led the probe. Sources, however, also claimed that about Rs 2 crore worth of medicines stored at UPMSCL were also found to be substandard as per norms set by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL).
Apart from medicines, injections for various diseases which had to be stored in a cool and dry environment of temperatures ranging between 20 degree Celsius to 25 degree Celsius, were also found gathering dust in the city’s blazing heat of over 40 degree Celsius.
Rules state that unused medicines stocked up by UPMSCL should have been returned to the manufacturing companies before the expiry date.
Sources said the Covid medicines remained unused because of the alterations in treatment prescribed by WHO and ICMR. Many medicines were not sent to hospitals where these were meant to be taken during Covid lockdown.