Malibu Pharmacy’s row with a client over misdiagnosis and data privacy violations has escalated, after the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) suspended one of the health facility’s top pharmacists for six months.
The board has frozen Dr Nancy Wangu Kaguri’s practising licence for half a year after finding that the pharmacist was responsible for misdiagnosing its client and sharing the wrong information with an insurance company.
Malibu Pharmacy was also faulted for failing to conceal the client’s information when delivering medicine she ordered, which has now contributed to Dr Kaguri’s suspension.
The PPB’s ethics and disciplinary committee comprising Richard Muthoka, Isha Anand, Bernard Maiyo, Fred Siyoi, and Juliet Konje termed the punishment lenient in its decision.
The pharmacy lost round one of the fight in May 2024 when the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) ordered Malibu to pay the client Sh700,000 for violating her privacy by failing to conceal personal details when delivering a package to her.
The dispute, which Malibu has maintained both at the ODPC and the PPB was a small issue, has snowballed into an expensive affair with the ripple effects that have now affected individual staff members.
Malibu has since appealed the ODPC’s decision. The High Court suspended the ODPC’s decision pending determination of the client’s appeal.
On January 19, 2024 Malibu sent a rider to deliver the client’s medication. The package had a label detailing her name, phone number, house name and the wrong diagnosis.
Three days later, the client wrote a letter to Malibu chief executive Kamau Ng’ang’a, complaining about the exposure of her data and the wrong diagnosis.
Dr Ng’ang’a responded and apologised, promising to address the issue. But when sending the client’s claim form to insurance, Malibu used the wrong diagnosis.
The client then filed a complaint at the ODPC on February 12, 2024, and another with the PPB on June 27, 2024. At the PPB, the charge was gross violation and misconduct in handling health data.
Dr Kaguri admitted that the client had been loyal over a long period of time, and that Malibu once bought a birthday cake for the customer’s child as a token of appreciation.
Dr Kaguri admitted that the diagnosis was wrong, but faulted the lack of adequate patient information from health facilities that issue prescriptions.
This, the pharmacist argued, forced her to rely on the prescription issued when recording the ailment diagnosed.
On exposing health data to third parties, Dr Kaguri maintained that the package left Malibu and only stopped at the client’s house hence could not have been seen by strangers.
Dr Kaguri claimed that the client blew the dispute out of proportion because Malibu declined to give her a token of apology.
Last year, Data Protection Commissioner Immaculate Kassait held that placing the client’s name, contact and address was necessary to facilitate delivery.
Ms Kassait, however, found that there was no need to indicate the client’s medical data on the tag attached to the package, as this exposed the confidential information to third parties.
