The Government is working to install an IT system that would facilitate medicine traceability by linking the stages of procurement, storage and distribution.
Health Minister Godfrey Farrugia told Times of Malta yesterday that such an IT system was still non-existent and, therefore, medicine could not be traced.
Times of Malta caught up with the minister as he was exiting the house of an elderly woman in Ħamrun who had approached him at a press conference earlier in the day complaining that her medicine was out of stock.
It turned out that the 84-year-old woman had another box of medicine stowed away among her belongings.
But what is the root of this lingering problem of out-of-stock medicine?
We need to work tirelessly to adopt procedures through which medicine can be ordered quickly
“The root of the problem is complex because it involves the methods used for procuring medicine and the way medicine is managed by the civil service.
“The problem also involves the storage of medicine and the method of distribution.”
The Government, Dr Farrugia added, had now analysed the positive and negative elements of the system.
A public consultation exercise will be held shortly to seek the public’s opinion on how the system can be improved and how bureaucracy could be eased, as per the Labour Party’s electoral pledge.
Dr Farrugia explained that the Government would first be tackling the pharmacy-of-your choice (POYC) system.
He clarified that he was not referring to the managerial aspect of the POYC system – which was something the Government took care of from its end – but of the way medicine was being distributed.
He pointed out that the system had two main flaws.
The first was that it had never been sustained as it should have, financially speaking, by the Government. The second flaw was that the process of ordering medicine by the civil service had never been simplified.
“We have the difficulty that our country is small and any foreign entrepreneurs who manufacture medicine regard us as a drop in the ocean when compared with other countries.
“But, despite all this, we need to work tirelessly to adopt procedures through which medicine can be ordered quickly.”
Dr Farrugia referred to the incident of omeprazole (a drug that reduces the amount of acid produced in the stomach) over this past summer.
“From the procurement aspect, it wasn’t done at the right time. As to the agent, he kept stalling to give us the medicine.
“We had to issue many other small tenders to make good until the medicine arrives.
“It arrived last week and we’re distributing it.”
All the 214 POYC pharmacies, he continued, should have the medicine in stock by today.
A White Paper on the POYC system would be issued and this might see the introduction of a “brown bag policy”, requiring the medication to be shipped to the patient, who must then bring it to the infusion site for administration.
Patients might also be given access to information online about how to administer their medication.
Referring to the problem of storage, Dr Farrugia said that all medicine would be centralised in one place close to Mater Dei Hospital, as opposed to the three different locations it is stored in at present.