Popular Pharmacy serves the country unevenly and has a control system susceptible to fraud, says TCU

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The Federal Audit Court made some determinations and recommendations to the Ministry of Health for the improvement of the program that offers free or discounted medicines to the population. The Federal Court of Auditors (TCU) found that the federal government program Popular Pharmacy — which offers, through accredited establishments, medicines at no cost or at a discount to the population — serves the country unevenly, in addition to having a control system susceptible to fraud. The findings form part of an audit carried out by the court. The result was presented this Wednesday (1st), during a plenary session of the Court. The court’s auditors concluded that the geographical distribution of pharmacies participating in the Popular Pharmacy program does not equally serve all regions of the country. Data presented by Minister Vital do Rêgo, rapporteur for the process, show that: only 73.9% of municipalities with less than 40,000 inhabitants have pharmacies that are part of the program, while the goal of the National Health Plan is to serve 90% of small counties; population access to the Popular Pharmacy program in municipalities with less than 40,000 inhabitants is only 33.2% in the North region and 58.7% in the Northeast region, while in the Southeast, South and Midwest regions, these percentages rise to 88.9%, 88.6% and 79.4%; states with the highest poverty rate in 2021 were the ones with the most municipalities not served by the program. Amapá, for example, has 13 municipalities with less than 40,000 inhabitants, however, none of these municipalities was served by the program; only six states – São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná and Goiás – concentrated 72.23% of the resources of the Popular Pharmacy program in 2021; The TCU audit also found that the program has a fragile and outdated sales and castration system for participating pharmacies, therefore susceptible to fraud. “The system currently does not allow identifying irregular transactions, with evidence of fraud resulting from the simulation of drug sales, generating low expectations of control”, said Minister Vital do Rêgo. “That system also does not promote the updating of the regularity of the registration data of the pharmacies and drugstores that are part of the PFPB [Programa Farmácia Popular]allowing the irregular/illegal operation of these accredited establishments”, he added. In view of the problems encountered, the TCU ministers decided to make determinations and recommendations to the Ministry of Health so that the Popular Pharmacy program is improved, including the implementation of preventive and detective controls to reduce the occurrence of fraud and the regularization of registration data of accredited establishments.

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