E-DRUG: Inappropriate donations to South East Asia (5)
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We have two programmes there. The first one already approved by all the
partners is discribed below.
The second one is the tally of all the drug donations with WHO.
Indonesia:
Program to support pharmaceutical management in Aceh Province funded by
the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO). A working
group has been created with the Pharmacy Department of the Ministry of
Health at federal level, the Pharmacy Department of Aceh Province, local
health agents, the WHO and Ausaid (Australian Aid) to decide what
strategy to adopt to manage drug donations: centralisation, selection,
re-labelling and proper storage of usable donated drugs, destruction of
inappropriate donations, expansion of the storage capacity of the
pharmaceutical warehouse of Aceh province and distribution to district
depots, hospitals, health centres, displaced persons camps and medical
consultations units, serving a population of 5 millions.
Warehouses have been identified and approved by the Ministry of Health
for management and distribution. Once selected, usable donations are
validated by the Provincial Department of Health and then sent to the
Distribution Centre, where health centres, hospitals, camp leaders,
national and international NGOs can stock up. All outdated,
unidentifiable products and tsunami-damaged medicines will be destroyed.
Usable medicines with foreign language instructions will be identified
and re-labelled.
The WHO is working with the Ministry of Health on adapting the
guidelines for the disposal of drugs* and, with funding from the
PSFCI/ECHO program, the Ministry of Health has already been able to
destroy 75m3 of outdated drug donations. The only incinerator available in Banda Aceh has a limited capacity, as it is a hospital incinerator. A non toxic waste disposal site has also been approved by the Ministry of Health.
Mapping of the different entry sites for donations and medical units
will be done across the country, and donations will either be
transferred to Banda Aceh or will be locally sorted. Even though
military and civilian air arrivals are now listed, areas where medicine
were dropped from helicopters or arrived by sea, directly in the
Indonesian districts, have not all been identified yet.
*Guidelines for safe disposal of unwanted pharmaceuticals in and after
emergencies:
www.who.int/medicines/library/par/who-edm-par-1999-2/who-edm-par-99-2.sh
tml
To go back to the quality of international humanitarian aid, we would
give a reminder that there are 12 Guidelines for Drug Donations and they
are to be followed in order to avoid creating serious problems for those
countries which have already been impacted by the disaster.
www.who.int/medicines/library/par/who-edm-par-1999-4/who-edm-par-99-4.sh
tml
Ghislaine Soulier
Responsable Communication
Pharmaciens Sans Frontihres Comiti International
4 voie Militaire des Gravanches
63100 Clermont-Ferrand - France
E-mail : g.soulier@psf-ci.org
Site Web : www.psfci.org
[Thank you Ghislaine. This starts to remind me of Bosnia. So much time and effort (and therefore waste of valuable human resources) into sorting, documenting and finding ways of getting rid of the waste. In Bosnia, the EU had to finance an incinerator. KM]