The Justice department will look into an audit report questioning the Department of Health for having P367 million worth of soon-to-expire medicine and medical supplies stored in its warehouses to determine if there is a basis for a full-blown investigation.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said he would secure a copy of the Commission on Audit report to find out if the huge stock of expiring medicine was a result of corruption.
Guevarra made the statement after a lawmaker asked the National Bureau of Investigation to probe the huge stock expiring drugs to determine the culpability of DOH officials led by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.
“I have not received a formal request from Rep. Bernadette Dy regarding this matter of huge stock of expiring medicine of the DOH. But now that she has mentioned it, I will secure a copy of the COA report and look into any possible criminal aspect,” Guevarra said.
“If the matter goes beyond simple administrative liability, then I will direct the NBI to do its own probe,” he added.
The NBI is the main investigating agency of the DOJ.
In its report, the COA said that as of January 2018, the DOH had stored in warehouses medicines and medical supplies worth P294.767 million.
The COA added that these medicine and medical supplies had expiry dates set 12 months later.
It said that P72.391 million worth of medicines were only distributed to DOH regional offices less than a year before their expiry dates.
Health Undersecretary Eric Domingo earlier said they would look into the non-distribution of the medicine and medical supplies.
Domingo added that while 80 percent of the medicine has been distributed to areas where they are needed the most, the department will still look at what happened to the rest stored in warehouses.
Meanwhile, Anakalusugan Party-list Rep. Mike Defensor called for an investigation of reports, also based on a COA report, that the DOH has overstocked on medicine worth P18.4 billion since 2015.
Defensor filed a resolution urging the House committee on health to look into the “unusually huge hoard” of medicine left undistributed by the Health department.
“We must stress that officials trusted with public resources are duty-bound to see to it that these supplies are used efficiently for the public good and benefit, and not just left to spoil away,” his statement read.
“In this case, we sure hope the problem has nothing to do with the over-purchasing of medicines owing to possible enticements from large pharmaceutical suppliers,” it stated.
The party-list lawmaker blamed “negligence” in the management of inventories for the non-distribution of the medicine, saying this was unacceptable, especially given that many poor Filipinos badly needed medicine.
“In fact, we’ve come across many cases wherein patients in public hospitals are being told to buy their own medicines from private pharmacies because the [hospital’s] subsidized dispensary has run out of supplies,” he said.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III, meanwhile, urged his colleagues to control their tempers as 12 committee hearings begin this week.
Blue Ribbon committee chairperman Senator Richard Gordon they will proceed with the hearing on the issues hounding PhilHealth although Health Secretary Francisco Duque III will not attend due to the dengue outbreak in some parts of the country.
While Gordon acknowledged Duque’s absence as valid, he said the secretary would not be able to duck further Senate hearings.
Earlier, Senator Panfilo Lacson accused Duque of a conflict of interest as he revealed that the PhilHealth office in the Ilocos region is housed in a building owned by the secretary’s family.
Duque has denied any conflict of interest on his part, saying he quit as president of his family corporation when he became Health secretary in 2018.