DILIMAN, Quezon City — The Commission on Audit (CoA) has flagged the Department of Health (DoH) over ₱11.2 billion worth of medicines, medical supplies as well as Covid-19 vaccines found to have expired in the agency’s warehouses and health facilities last year.

In its 2023 annual audit report on the DoH, state auditors cited that “drugs, medicines and medical supplies amounting to ₱11,186,368,902.47, which include 7,035,161 vials of Covid-19 vaccines, expired in the health department’s warehouses and health facilities without being utilized due to inadequate procurement planning and poor distribution and monitoring systems, which resulted in wastage of government funds and resources.”

In addition, CoA pointed out also in the report that this was on top of ₱65.444 million in “nearly expiring inventories” found “unutilized and undistributed” in DoH offices and health facilities as of December 31 last year.

The audit body noted that these nearly expiring drugs and medicines, which remained under the DoH inventories, have a shelf life of less than one year, thus exposing government funds to another possible wastage.

The audit breakdown showed that the DoH Central Office (CO) was responsible for the bulk of the expired inventories amounting to ₱11.1 billion, composed of 6,754,724 vials of expired Covid-19 vaccines and 24,539 bags of donated dialysis solution.

As for the expired Covid-19 vaccines under the DoH CO’s custody, 5,428,915 vials were procured by the government while 1,325,809 vials were received as donations.

CoA said the expiration of these huge sums of vaccines has exposed the DoH’s “inability to safeguard, manage and utilize health funds and resources economically and effectively.”

“Further, this condition had entailed storage and manpower costs, which could have aided the government in rendering other priority services,” CoA added.

As for the expired dialysis solution bags, the audit body noted that the items were still received by the DoH CO even if they have less than one and a half years “before expiration,” also referred to as shelf life.

As a result, most of the intended recipient hospitals and facilities refused to accept the items due to “lack of storage space” and because they can no longer utilize the solutions.

In ending, the audit body stated that this has contravened the DoH’s own guidelines, under its Administrative Order 9-B series of 1998, which states that for the acceptance of drugs, medicines, reagents and other medical supplies, the expiration date “should not be less than two years from the date of manufacture and not less than one and a half years from the date of delivery.”