No expired medicines in Army’s combat kits

The Philippine Army on Wednesday denied that they procured and distributed expired medical kits in 2014.

“The Philippine Army would like to stress it does not procure nor distribute expired medicines for our troops,” Army spokesman Col. Benjamin Hao told a press briefing at the Armed Forces of the Philippines headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo.

Hao pointed out that the Commission on Audit (COA) 2014 report, which a news report quoted, did not state that the Army procured or distributed expired or expiring combat medical kits, contrary to what the news report said.

Hao also clarified that the sample medicines the COA inspected last February at Fort Bonifacio were never distributed to troops, but were only among a few remaining sets “unclaimed” by their “end-user” unit since 2013.

Hao said 907 of the 1,040 medical kits, procured June 2013, were already distributed by December 2013, the remaining 90 by September 2014. Only 43, meant for the Training and Doctrine Command, went unclaimed. These were the stocks the COA inspected in February.

The COA report, which was uploaded on COA’s website, only states that “several” of the “remaining stock” the agency inspected were expired or expiring upon the COA’s inspection last Feb. 10, 2015.