Activists have raised concern over truck loads of medicine that have been dumped in the open inside the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation (TNMSC) warehouse complex located in a secluded area inside the Madurai Collectorate.
An employee of the Department of Medical and Rural Health Services, who had been to the warehouse recently to transport medicines for a primary health centre, brought to the notice of the The Hindu hundreds of cartons of different types of medicines, many of which appeared to have passed their expiry date, dumped outside the building.
“I have been visiting the complex often and have found such dumping of medicines before as well. This time, however, I noticed that the quantity was huge. It is likely due to inefficiencies in the procurement process, because of which the medicines have been dumped outside,” he said.
In a subsequent visit to the premises, The Hindu confirmed that cartons of medicines had been dumped in the open although the precise types and expiry dates of all these medicines could not be ascertained.
V. P. Manikandan, a Madurai-based social activist, who helps with the medical treatment of abandoned elderly people, demanded a thorough enquiry by senior-level officials into the issue.
“On the one hand, we often hear complaints of unavailability of many normal and life-saving drugs in government hospitals, particularly in Government Rajaji Hospital where thousands of patients come for treatment. On the other, it appears that such huge quantity of medicines is either improperly stored or being wasted,” he alleged.
Frozen drugs
Senior officials from TNMSC, however, denied any irregularities. Pointing out that TNMSC, which is a Tamil Nadu government undertaking, was responsible for procurement and supply of drugs to all government hospitals through its warehouses located in each district, a top official said that the drugs dumped in the open were ‘frozen drugs,’ which are, in fact, considered biomedical waste.
“As per our quality control process, once the drugs reach the warehouses from suppliers across the country, random samples are sent to empanelled laboratories for quality check. On an average, nearly 1 % of our total procurement fail the quality tests,” he said.
Stating that the particular batch of such failed drugs would be marked as ‘frozen’ and the supplier concerned intimated to take it back, the official said that a majority of suppliers often chose to not take them back owing to transportation cost.
“Recently, we found that a huge quantity of such ‘frozen drugs’ were lying in our warehouses for the past three to four years. Consequently, we have now ordered all the warehouses to clear them through the vendor engaged for handling our biomedical waste. Hence, they have been taken out,” he said.