GMC spends up to 16 times the price for medicines/hospital supplies it buys from local retailers
GERARD DE SOUZA & GLENN COSTA
PANJIM: Goa Medical College is spending up to 16 times more than the price for medicines and hospital supplies it purchases through local retailers as compared to purchases made through tenders.
This has been going on for at least the past four years, with GMC authorities admitting that the medicines purchased through the tender route fall short of requirements due to a host of reasons from “delayed supplies” to GMC pharmacies “underestimating requirements” and therefore purchases have to be made from local retailers.
In the current financial year, the extra expenditure on procuring medicines and hospital supplies through local retailers the cost is going to be even more than in previous years, because it is not a question of only making up the shortfall this time around ~ tenders have not even been floated yet and all necessary purchases have been made through local retailers only, at many times the cost when compared to purchases through the tender route. Last year itself, the GMC spent over Rs 4.06 crore on retail purchases, this year’s figure is expected to be much higher given that tenders are yet to be floated and running into crores of rupees. Incidentally, these medicines are provided free to patients at GMC.
Figures available with Herald, sourced through the Right to Information Act, reveal that over the last four years (not including 2013-14), the government has spent a total of Rs 12.42 crore on local (retail) purchase. While this may seem small in comparison to the Rs 94.38 crore that the government spent during the same period on purchase of medicines through the tender route, the devil lies in the details.
During the financial year 2012-13, while the government spent Rs 5.91 per unit on medicines and hospital supplies procured through tendering, it spent Rs 68.18 per unit for a similar list of medicines purchased from retail stores through “local purchase” making it a little more than 11 times the tender price. In 2011-12, the difference was 15 times the tender price, while in 2010-11 local purchase was sixteen times the tender price (see box).
One of the reasons given for resorting to local purchase ~ underestimation of requirements by GMC ~ is a large contributor to this local purchase bill and has raised suspicions that this may be deliberate.
In the case of the immunosuppressant Mycophenolate Mofetil, used extensively in transplant medicine, the government brought only 2,650 units for 2012-13 costing Rs 69,562 through tender. By the end of the year, the GMC ended up procuring an additional 9,020 units through local purchase costing Rs 6.79 lakh.
In another example, that of the Injection Mannitol, the government in the year 2012-13 procured 8,547 units through a tender at the cost of 1.92-lakh. However, it also bought 5,578 units of Mannitol through local purchase at a cost of Rs 4.74-lakh, a simple case of paying much more for much less.
Examples like this abound where all medicines ranging from cancer drugs and vaccines to simple things like disposable syringes and gauzes and bandages meant to be given to the patients free seemingly run out, forcing the GMC to replenish stocks through local retail purchase at a much higher rate and at the cost of the government, i.e. the people, of Goa.
The Goa Medical College at Bambolim has some 1000 items for purchase through the central stores (pharmacy). This includes some 500-plus medicines, vaccines, serums and allied hospital such as surgical gloves, cotton, chemicals, etc all given free to patients of GMCH and attached hospitals, i.e. the Department of Pulmonary Medicine, St Inez, Rural Health Centre Mandur and Urban Health Centre, St Cruz.
