Massive corruption in Kerala's govt hospital's drugs distribution: report
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Thiruvananthapuram: In Sree Avittom Thirunal Hospital, a part of Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Campus here, massive corruption through fraud has been reported in the system that distributes drugs in subsidy, a financial report suggested. The findings of the probe behind the report stated that drugs procured by a public entity under the state at low prices to distribute among poor patients were being resold to wholesalers for high returns, Madhyamam reported.
Sree Avittom Thirunal Hospital is a public health institution under the state government that deals with medical branches of paediatrics, obstetrics, and gynaecology. It offers super-speciality care for infants and children.
Drug companies provide the In House Drug Bank (IHDB) of the SAT Hospital with medicines at lower costs than other wholesalers. The report submitted by the state finance department said that the drugs IHDB procured at low cost were resold to wholesalers instead of being distributed to patients as they were supposed to. Citing this, the financial report recommended the cancellation of IHDB's wholesale license and the sale of medicines by the organization restricted to over-the-counter retail trade alone.
Earlier, the state's drugs control department also found in an investigation that IHDB procures medicines from companies at low rates and resells the same wholesalers for higher prices, earning sums in crores.
According to the financial report, IHDB officials might be making huge profits through reselling medicines procured cheaply on small margins and suspect that these sale links go beyond state borders. Citing this, the report recommends temporarily suspending senior pharmacy officials of IHDB and conducting a probe. The report also said that the scope of the investigation should include whether pharmacists in charge of IHDB have acquired illegal wealth.
The report further suggests some accounting guidelines for IHDB. It says that the bills of sales of the respective days (24 hours) in the pharmacies of IHDB and the details of payment of this amount to the bank should be reported from IHDB to the accounts department on the same day and accounts department under the leadership of Accounts Officer should check these properly.
The report also recommends that bills cancelled from IHDB must be countersigned by the Accounts Officer. At present, orders for medicines are accepted at IHDB through phone and WhatsApp-text messages. Henceforth, supply orders should be placed only with the approval of the Accounts Officer after taking indents from the company, other organizations and wholesalers.
It was in February 2017 that IHDB received the license for wholesale trading of medicines. The drugs procured by IHDB are distributed among the Thiruvananthapuram Regional Cancer Centre, Medical College, Sree Chithra Medical Centre, Sree Avittom Thirunaal Hospital, etc., which all are major public health centres under the state government.