Audit of the Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

摘要

To ensure preparedness for war or other contingencies, the Department of Defense (DoD) maintains significant pre-positioned reserves of critical medical material. The Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) is a joint DoD and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) program. It was created to enable DoD to defer drug replacement costs by delaying the replacement of certain drugs that have useful lives beyond their expiration dates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains the Strategic National Stockpile (Stockpile), which contains significant amounts of pre-positioned drugs for use in responding to emergencies throughout the United States. Although each of the drugs has an expiration date set by the manufacturer, if a drug is stored properly, its shelf life can be extended beyond that date. In 2002, CDC entered into an interagency agreement with DoD to use the SLEP to defer the costs of replacing the Stockpile inventory. Under the agreement, FDA tests SLEP-eligible drugs1 that are stored in the Stockpile inventory to determine whether the drugs useful lives can be extended beyond their original expiration dates.