8 hours ago20 thousand tonnes of undocumented drugs are kept in Kosovo warehouses
Periskopi(7 years ago)
(7 years ago)More than 20,000 tonnes of over-term drugs, which are out of use, lie in various warehouses in Kosovo. This estimate was done on the basis of an international paper in 2018. Since then, no medicine has been eliminated, so it is now believed that the amount is even greater. Such an amount [...]
Such a large quantity of long - term drugs in storage directly endangers the health of citizens.
The Ministry of Health's pharmaceutical Inspectorate Chief Inspector Shaban Osmanaj tells Radio Free Europe that not to do so indefinitely relates to the uncertainty surrounding legal issues of annihilation.
He says that it is drugs that release gases and threaten the environment, piercing drugs that endanger their workers, as well as drugs that are thrown into safe, endangered places.
Of course, failure to eliminate drugs is very dangerous to the health of citizens. After the war, there are drugs that have not been eliminated and housed. An action was undertaken in 2008, by the Health Ministry and the extermination has been unclear and has been interrupted. Eliminating drugs is not illegal, but it is not clear, because it is regulated by three laws. Health law, it's for products and medical equipment and the Law for Waste. Viewed from this perspective, it has been required to become a change of current law and the group for the concept of waste, which is in the final phase, has been created. Without the legal issue settled, these drugs cannot be eliminated”, Osmanaj says.
It is estimated that there are up to eight tons of drugs indefinitely, but there are also drugs in the health ministry's central depot and even in the Family Medicine Centers.
Recently, even at the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo, a considerable amount of the expired drugs, which, according to Shpend Fazliu, the spokesman for this institution, have already been isolated, and, he says, pose no danger to human life.
However, he says they are waiting for these drugs to be eliminated, since they are not the only ones who remain in this warehouse indefinitely.
The Kosovo University Clinical Centre's Central Medicine “has recorded an amount of non-term medicines and they are isolated. All were registered by separate commissions, within the Central Barnator, and for all was reported to the pharmaceutical Inspectorate operating within the Ministry of Health. The moment the Health Ministry contracts a company, it will begin to eliminate drugs. These drugs are isolated and do not endanger the health of citizens or patients. It's an amount of drugs collected earlier. All reported”, Fazliu said.
In the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, however, they had said that the issue of drug annihilation has been regulated by an act of sublaw, with an administrative guide, which in detail defines the conditions under which the elimination of drugs in Kosovo is done.
This can be done in licensed institutions on this issue and on the basis of separate health institutions contracts, separate contracts are also linked. The administrative guidance also envisions the destruction of drugs in Sharcem, Ferronikel or the Kosovo Energy Corporation, where high temperatures develop, which enable destruction without environmental consequences. But all of this needs to be arranged with separate contracts”, officials said in the ministry.
Even so, the Ministry of Health has not yet contracted any companies to eliminate drugs, though more than 20,000 tonnes of drugs are said to have been collected indefinitely.
