The revelations were made at the laying of the report of the standing committee of FPAC. The report covers the 2020 audited accounts of the Government of The Gambia, and the annual-activity reports and audited financial statements of public agencies, hospitals and local government councils, which was read by Hon Alhagie S. Darboe, Chairperson of the committee.
FPAC noted that the hospital’s Procurement Unit was “wrongly placed” in charge of keeping the Non-Current Asset (NCA) register. “Items purchased for the hospital were not routed through the stores, as expected, but instead went straight to user departments. Even worse, many items on the asset register had no cost or reference numbers and were not found where the records said they should be,” the committee stated.
It gave the hospital’s management 30 days from the adoption of the report to provide an updated and accurate asset register for further review.
The committee said auditors discovered that tally cards and digital records of drugs and food items were outdated or incomplete. Some drugs were already unsealed and being used while still on the shelves without any documentation or proof that they were dispensed by qualified medical staff.
“Worse still, the storage area lacked air conditioning - an essential requirement for preserving certain types of medicine,” the committee report states.
The committee thus recommends that proper records must be kept for all items moving in and out of the store.
They also recommend that only trained staff should dispense drugs, and only through the correct channels.
“Air conditioners must be installed urgently to protect the potency of medicines,” the committee recommends.
In what FPAC described as a “grave concern”, it was also discovered that funds from the Drug Revolving Fund (DRF), a special fund set aside solely for buying drugs, were instead used to pay hospital staff.
The committee urged the hospital’s Board and the Ministry of Health to immediately address the situation and stop the misuse of the DRF.
To ensure transparency and sustainability in service delivery, FPAC also recommended the following: a system to reimburse hospitals based on the number of maternal deliveries they perform; submission of all board meeting minutes from 2017 to 2018 to verify decisions on fuel spending; a detailed assessment of the hospital’s monthly repairs and maintenance costs, and an immediate resolution of all prior-year audit concerns.
