Fire-Damaged State Lab Finally Getting Renovated

Cardboard Boxes
[File Photo]
Monday, 24  April 2023

A large quantity of expired drugs stored at the TRNC State Laboratory, which was damaged by a fire in 2016, are to be removed in order to begin renovation work, Yeniduzen reports.

The fire broke out in the basement of the state laboratory in December 2016 causing millions of lira’s worth of damage.

It was announced by the Ministry of Health that the building will be emptied in order to begin renovation work. 

A journalist from the newspaper said the rooms were literally overflowing with cartons of drugs stored beyond their expiry date. Some drugs expired in 2020, Yeniduzen states. However, the newspaper writes that since the fire in 2016, drugs which were in date and still usable were left in the building.

Director of Gürdal Recycling Mustafa Ersözlü, said that following inspection of the stored drugs, they would be classified as “hazardous waste” and disposed of in special furnaces at their facilities in Haspolat.

Asked how much waste drugs they would need to dispose of, he replied it was an estimated 70-80 truckloads, however, he was not sure at the time of interview.

Meanwhile, the President of the Pharmacists Association Umut Öksüz said that most of the expired drugs that will be sent for disposal are drugs purchased from the public purse.

Öksüz said, “Since there was no tracking system, the expiration dates of the drugs in the state outpatient clinics, hospitals and the Medicines and Pharmacy Department were checked by hand”.

Yeniduzen

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