The Benue State Teaching Hospital has disposed of expired drugs worth over N200 million by burning them on Friday.
The drugs were kept at the Muhammad Buhari Mother and Child Hospital stores in Makurdi, the state capital.
The Chief Medical Director of BSUTH, Stephen Hwande, said that the drugs were procured by the hospital for the patients, but were not used before they expired. He said that there was no reason for the hospital to waste such a huge amount of drugs, when they could have been donated to other hospitals, IDP camps, or medical outreaches.
“These are drugs acquired by the hospital to be used by the hospital for the patients. So why did they abandon the drugs to the point of expiration, no one can say.
“When you get drugs with short dates, you can convey some of these drugs to other hospitals for instance, we have Internally Displaced Persons camps you can give them, hospitals and you can even do medical outreach with the drugs before they expire.
“There is no reason you should have drugs worth this amount of money expiring in this hospital when the whole state needs drugs. To keep our record straight because sometimes people may even go to the store and still use them so we decided to destroy the drugs,” he said.
He said that the drugs that were destroyed included antibiotics, anti-hypertensive, anti-malaria, and consumables like iodine, bandages, urine bags, and more. He said that the drugs could have stocked a big pharmacy in Makurdi.
Hwande also revealed that the hospital had over 100 unclaimed corpses in the morgue, and that the hospital had written to the State Commissioner of Police to seek permission to bury them.
