The situation, in brief
Public health expert Dr. Tony Leachon is urging Health Secretary Edwin Mercado to implement a real-time medicine tracking and deployment system, coordinate with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to audit the quality of procured drugs, and publicly demand accountability from officials…
Public health expert Dr. Tony Leachon is urging Health Secretary Edwin Mercado to implement a real-time medicine tracking and deployment system, coordinate with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to audit the quality of procured drugs, and publicly demand accountability from officials responsible for the ₱217 million in expired medicines and the additional ₱475 million at risk.
In an interview on DZRH News program The Situation Report on Thursday, September 17, Leachon called on Mercado to show the moral courage the situation demands.
The public health expert made the call a day after Senator Raffy Tulfo confronted Mercado directly during a Senate hearing on the DOH’s expired and allegedly buried medicines, telling the secretary to act immediately without further deliberation.
Leachon is confident that Mercado is capable of the task, describing him as a good person, but said good intentions are no longer enough given the scale of the systemic failure that has produced ₱692 million in expired or at-risk medicines from a healthcare fund that the poorest Filipinos depend on.
“Si Secretary Mercado mabait na tao ‘yan eh, pero kailangan matibay din ang dibdib niyo po. Dapat may real-time tracking ka,” the public heatlh expert said.
Leachon proposed a specific mechanism: a monthly deployment cycle where every medicine batch received by DOH is tracked in real time and immediately forwarded to all 82 provincial governors and relevant LGU health offices.
The public health expert said the mechanism should come with a publicly visible traffic light dashboard showing in green, yellow, or red which LGUs have claimed their allocation and which have not.
“Every month ide-deploy na kaagad. ‘Yung hindi kumuha ng gamot, i-publish natin sa social media tapos mag-traffic light ka diyan na red, yellow, and green,” Leachon said.
He said the FDA must also be involved, not just for the supply chain failures but to verify whether the medicines that expired were even fit for distribution in the first place, checking whether the active pharmaceutical ingredients in procured drugs met FDA requirements for efficacy, potency, and safety.
“Dapat involved din ‘yung Bids and Awards Committee, at ‘yung FDA, whether sila ay nagko-comply with the FDA requirements of efficacy, potency, and safety,” Leachon said.
The public health expert said the Commission on Audit (COA) must also investigate, but called for the shift from post-audit to quarterly audits, since annual COA reviews arrive too late to prevent waste that has already compounded into hundreds of millions of pesos.
Leachon said the problem will not be solved by Senate hearings alone: what is needed is a direct order from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself, who, Leachon said, should be furious that medicines paid for by the Filipino people are being buried while patients go without treatment.
“Dapat magalit si President Marcos and bang the table in the cabinet meeting, dapat talagang magmumura siya. Kasi hirap na hirap nga ang mga tao sa healthcare system, ang dami niyang ginagawa for DOH at ‘tsaka sa PhilHealth,” Leachon said.
The public health expert expressed confidence that the healthcare system has able leaders in Mercado and PhilHealth CEO Beverly Ho, but stressed that both need a marching order from the President to act with the decisiveness the situation demands.
“The President should crack the whip right now kasi the healthcare system is in chaos. I think ang panawagan din dito, maliban sa ating mga healthcare leaders, is for the President to deliver right now the right blows so that heads will roll,” Leachon said.
He said the DOH must also ensure that medicine procurement follows the 18-month shelf life requirement, and that any procurement that accepts drugs with less than 18 months remaining before expiry should be flagged and investigated immediately as a procurement anomaly.
Leachon said that accountability in this case is not difficult to trace: connecting the dots from the expired medicines to the officials in charge of procurement, the Bids and Awards Committee, and the warehousing and deployment chain is, in his words, not too difficult to do.
“Madaling i-connect ‘yung dots eh, it’s not too difficult to connect the dots,” Leachon said.
