16 Nov 2022

The Ministry of Health has started the implementation of Remaining Shelf Life (RSL) approval system for less than 80 per cent shelf life Items from the supplier.

    Assistant Minister of Health Mr Setlhomo Lelatisitswe said the system was implemented to avoid unplanned procurement.

  Apprising Parliament on the health commodities, that is medicines, laboratory commodities and non-drug products expiries for the past 10 years, Mr Lelatisitswe revealed that they were worth over P282million.

He said that some product expiries were unavoidable because they had to be stocked around the year to tackle any emergency crisis such as snake venoms, malaria drugs, and vaccine antidotes among others. He said there were also unavoidable changes in treatment guidelines for different national programmes where there was need for abrupt changes even before the country could consume the current stock on hand such as ARVs.

Mr Lelatisitswe said there was inherent short shelf life for some products of not more than one year for some laboratory items such as reagents. He also pointed out to lack of commodity visibility throughout the supply chain between CMS and facilities to facilitate the redistribution of items. However, he said  that expiries could not be attributed to shortage of medicines as shortage was caused by lack of tenders in place and long lead times by suppliers.

He said that was a manual system called Logistics Management Information System that reported stock consumption monthly from facilities but did not provide real-time data.

He added that the ministry had set a maximum expiry value of 2.5 per cent and the expiry value was 2.4 per cent in the past 10 years which was lower than the set value of three per cent.

Explaining actions taken to reduce expiries at CMS, Mr Lelatisitswe said they were 3-6 months near expiry reports and management of short dated and slow moving items through expiry meetings.  Further, he said they had established a framework contract system with suppliers to avoid bulk procurement at once and would advertise short dated and slow-moving items to all facilities.

Mr Lelatisitswe said they consulted with prescribers to use short-dated and slow-moving items at CMS and strengthen annual quantification by using proper average monthly consumption to avoid stock.

He said they were to come up with lab package system to ensure all the necessary items availed at the same time to perform a particular test and were to collaborate with relevant departments to ensure all lab equipment were well functioning.

The assistant minister said the national lab list and guidelines were in the process by the relevant office at the ministry through the National Standing Committee on Lab Equipment and Supplies (NASCOLES)

He said the e-pulse system was in process to connect facilities with the CMS system for easy inventory monitoring and data visibility.

Additionally, Mr Lelatisitswe said that the National Standard Treatment Guideline update was in process by the Botswana Essential Drug Action Program at the ministry.

He was responding to a question from Gaborone Bonnington South MP, Mr Christian Greef who asked the minister to apprise Parliament on the value and class of medicines and non-drugs products that expired at CMS facilities in the past 10 years.

Mr Greef wanted to know  why products expired, if the expiry of products led to shortage of medicines in the country and whether the ministry had any system that cracked commodity usage. He asked if the expiries fell within the accepted expiry level set by the ministry and if not what was being done to address the challenge.  ENDS