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The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has found gaping loopholes in the procurement process of medicines and medical equipment for hospitals under the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), disease control programmes and for extending essential healthcare facilities to the people in Union Government hospitals, research bodies and institutes, currently being run by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
In a report on procurement of medicines and medical equipment, tabled in Parliament recently by the Committee's Chairman, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, PAC deplored the lack of any uniform and standardised purchase procedure for procurement of medicines and medical equipment by the Medical Store Organisation (MSO), a wing of the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the Union Health Ministry.
Even as the MSO's advent dates back to the 1940s with the remit to meet the needs of various indentors including other Ministries of the Government of India in respect of medicines, surgical equipment and other medical supplies and manufacture of drugs/medicines, MSO has failed to meet these objectives over the years. This was compounded by the shrinking role of MSO over the yeas to procurement of small quantities of drugs/medicines intended by CGHS dispensaries outside Delhi, Central Government hospitals and for para-military forces such as CRPF, BSF and ITBP.
The PAC said the lead role of MSO in catering to the needs of various indentors showed signs of dwindling from the late 1970s due to the development of capabilities of the States to locally meet the bulk requirements of the Centrally-sponsored schemes, a widespread market for pharmaceuticals, increasing outreach of CGHS outside Delhi and wider acceptability of the rate contract system.
However, the report also highlighted large abuse in the local purchase system which suffered no defined process to update the medicine selection with major hospitals not being able to prepare the essential list of drugs.
Stating that there was no timely revision of the MSO manual of 1979 which had become outdated, the report said even the codification process of the Revised Manual to be completed by December 2009, could not be done till date. The only way the procurement process is to follow a standardised purchase procedure, it said only if there is a codified purchase manual.
AIIMS' plight
Deploring the delay in the introduction of the manual on financial management of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which is stuck as the computer-based information system was woefully inadequate in AIIMS, the Committee took exception to the “sorry state of affairs that a computer-aided information management system is inexplicably deficient in a super-speciality hospital like the AIIMS.”
The report also documented other disconcerting features such as no fixed time limit for obtaining the test reports on contentious drugs, all the States not having the Drug Testing Laboratories and where they exist, not having the capacity to test all types of drugs and the huge gap between the projection and actual utilisation of medicines leading to unnecessary stockpiling of medicines and wastage of money.
Stating that in drugs procured locally there is no pre-procurement inspection possibility, the report said that in respect of medicines procured in bulk in a centralised way there is prior inspection of the supplier.
geeyes@thehindu.co.in
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