A new study by the ministry of health has revealed that half of hospitals in Kenya failed expired drug test, opening the lid to a rotten health sector.
According to the Kenya Harmonised Health Facility Assessment report for 2018/19, the affected hospitals do not regularly remove expired or unusable medicine from the shelves.
The research also found out that drug outlets in Nairobi, Nyeri, Migori and Garissa were the worst in keeping records of drugs received, dispensed and expired.
Of all the drug outlets and hospitals surveyed, only 54 percent have records and processes to ensure disposal of expired or unusable drugs.
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Close to 75 percent of the counties were found to have proper drug inventories, with Isiolo ranked the best at 100 percent followed by Baringo at 98 percent.
“Pharmacy reporting systems were performing slightly below expected standards as all pharmacies are to have systems to manage drugs in terms of expiries and adverse events reporting,” reads the report in part.
Only 33 percent of health facilities were found to have poor quality medical products.
78 percent of health facilities stored pharmaceutical commodities in innappropriate conditions, while only 10 percent had good storage facilities.
For Secondary and tertiary hospitals, 50 percent met the storage quality requirements.
The study took into account data from 2,505 health facilities in the country out of 2,732.
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