Expired medicines were given to only one patient at the Johannesburg Hospital, the Gauteng department of health said on Tuesday.
”We checked the records and this is clearly an isolated incident,” said the department’s chief operating officer, Abdul Rahman.
He said the department had initiated a disciplinary process against both the pharmacist and the dispensing pharmacist assistant who committed the oversight.
”The case will also be reported to the South African Pharmacy Council.
”We sincerely regret the incident,” said Rahman.
”We have strict policies and procedures in place throughout all hospitals, clinics and medical facilities in the province with regard to the storage and dispensing of drugs and the disposal of expired medicines.”
Johannesburg Hospital chief executive Sagie Pillay said the hospital was is in the process of contacting the patient to ensure that the correct medicine would be given.
The provincial health department has further appointed a team to investigate the incident and to report on the state of controls over medicines.
The Star reported on Tuesday that pharmacists at the hospital had been dispensing expired medicines and covering their actions by sticking labels over the expiry date.
The newspaper reported the case of a 42-year-old epileptic patient who had received expired medicines from the hospital’s dispensary for the past four months.
She was at risk of having multiple epileptic seizures because of the expired drugs, the report read.
It added that despite the drugs having passed their expiry dates, the patient continued to use them because she could not afford to buy them at her local chemist.
‘Appalled’
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Tuesday said that the Gauteng health department should tighten controls on expired medicines after reports that patients at Johannesburg Hospital had been given old drugs.
”I am appalled,” said the DA’s Gauteng health spokesperson, Jack Bloom.
”Johannesburg Hospital CEO Sagie Pillay has assured me that there are strict controls to destroy all expired medicines, but the fact that this could happen at a flagship hospital is immensely disturbing,” he said.
”There may well be expired medicine at other hospitals in Gauteng. This is a wake-up call for the Gauteng health department to tighten expired medicines controls everywhere to minimise the risk that patients may suffer from bad medicine.” — Sapa