Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu’s 2024/25 audit revealed that essential medicines, mainly for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and cancer, worth nearly Sh1 billion (around Sh914 million) expired while sitting in KEMSA warehouses.
Everyone is asking the same question: how does something like an antimalarial expire while hospitals are facing drug shortages?
The truth is that expiries are inevitable. Every pharmacy, hospital, wholesaler, or warehouse will have some products expire. The problem starts when expiries get out of control.
KEMSA has explained that some of the losses were linked to donor-funded products, changes in treatment guidelines, and other external factors. That may be true, especially since a significant portion of the expired stock consisted of anticancer medicines, non-pharmaceutical supplies, and donor-funded products.
However, the situation still highlights how costly poor expiry management can become.
Many pharmacy professionals rarely pay attention to expiries until products are already close to their expiry dates. They continue with their normal routine, not realizing that expiries can be controlled and kept at lower levels.
If expiries can happen on a large scale, they can also happen in a small pharmacy for the same reasons. At the end of the day, it is still stock loss.
So how do expiries happen in the first place?
While overstocking is the main cause, other common reasons include:
- Ordering too much of slow-moving products
- Stocking excessive quantities of short-dated items
- Poor stock management practices
- Failure to follow FEFO (First Expiry, First Out)
The next question is: where do we begin?
Start by conducting regular expiry checks. This gives you a clear picture of what is about to expire and what has already expired, allowing you to take action early.
Many pharmacy professionals see expiry checks as extra work and avoid them. Yet a simple monthly review can significantly reduce losses.
The final step is putting systems in place to prevent expiries from happening in the first place.
Some practical measures include:
- Training staff on expiry management using clear SOPs
- Negotiating for longer shelf life from suppliers whenever possible
- Requesting letters of undertaking for short-dated stock
- Using software that tracks batch numbers, expiry dates, and sends expiry alerts
- Basing orders on actual consumption patterns and demand trends
- Redistributing short-dated stock to facilities with higher consumption
- Clearly labeling short-expiry products so they are prioritized for dispensing
Conclusion
Stock does not expire overnight. Most expiries build up quietly over months through poor ordering, weak monitoring, and delayed action. The good news is that while expiries cannot be eliminated completely, they can be controlled. The pharmacies that keep losses low are usually not lucky—they simply pay attention to the details before the problem becomes too large to manage.
