More than a thousand pharmacies in Kazakhstan have been caught selling expired medicines. Vice Minister of Trade and Integration Aset Nusupov announced this at a briefing at the Central Communications Service, according to infohub.kz.
The digital marking system Naqty Onim helped uncover the violations. "The system detects expired medicines. For example, more than 1,000 market participants were found to have 7,500 cases of selling medicines whose shelf life had expired," the vice minister said.
In addition, 27,000 packages of drugs intended for free distribution were found in commercial sale. Over 30 organizations were fined 12.3 million tenge for this, and another 43 pharmacies received orders to remedy the violations.
"That is, these drugs had the corresponding 'tegin' stamp, but in fact they were sold for money according to receipts. Moreover, more than 470,000 cases of repeated sale of packages with applied marking codes were detected," Nusupov emphasized.
He also reported that the Naqty Onim app has been downloaded more than 55,000 times to date. Users have verified about 2.3 million marking codes for authenticity. At the same time, Kazakhstanis have already submitted nearly 10,000 complaints about violations of marking requirements through the app.
Nusupov noted that digital marking allows the ministry to track all these issues.
Earlier it became known that more than 3 million citizens in Kazakhstan receive free medicines from the state each year. Over seven years, 1.3 trillion tenge in budget funds have been allocated for this purpose.