Overspending or misappropriation?

Feb 22, 2011 Editorial

Over the years there have been numerous numbers of those Guyanese infected by HIV/AIDS. A few years ago, the Ministry of Health reported that the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) reported that four per cent of Guyanese had been infected.
This was a ridiculously high number and immediately Guyana was said to have the highest percentage of AIDS outside of Haiti.
Surely, this was not something of which we would have been proud but it did spark a drive to cut the incidence. There was the funding provided by the American; there was the move to produce anti retroviral drugs and Guyana actually began to produce such drugs; there was the drive to effect behavioral change out of which came the slogan “Abstain, Be Faithful and Condomise”.
The latter drive to exact a change in sexual behaviour was easier said than done since sex is a physiological thing and changes in physiology are never easy.
Then came the PEPFAR programme. This was a programme initiated by United States President George Bush for AIDS Relief. For four years the US Government provided at least US$ 4 million each year for the purchase of drugs.
The New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation was entrusted with the responsibility to produce these drugs and each year it faithfully provided the drugs. There was no tender; it was a case of the Health Ministry simply identifying a supplier and paying him, sometimes in advance, for the procurement of the drugs.
Last year, this practice came to a halt and with it the realisation that all was not well with the programme. But even before this. The international community revised the local AIDS population downwards. Guyana now has less than two thousand AIDS-infected people.
Some questions arise. Did nearly three thousand people suddenly upped and died? Did the country deliberately inflate the figures to attract money from the international community? And if so, to what end was the extra money put. All certainly did not go to buying anti retrovirals.
We arrive at this conclusion when we examine the happenings over the past year. Last year, there were two shortages of anti retroviral drugs and the government was forced to place emergency orders. The identified supplier was International Pharmaceutical Agency—IPA. This company brought in the drugs from India in five tranches at a cost of less than $100 million. By the end of the year the company had imported all the needed drugs. It had spent $85 million.
An investigation revealed that these drugs are still in the system and should last until October.
This means that Guyana spent less than twenty per cent than was previously spent to procure the same drugs. Because of the absence of transparency the society could not say what was happening. The Health Minister must now explain what really happened to the nearly US$3 million each year.
It goes without saying that while we believe that the international donors are big on record keeping, this is certainly not the case. We have not heard any donor seeking an explanation for the inflated expenditure. It is as if they do not have to account to the people whose money it is that the country gets.
Perhaps the money was spent in other areas in the health sector but there is no record of this and the absence of such records now forces people to conclude that there was corruption in the procurement of anti retroviral drugs.
The story does not end there. We have found that the Health Ministry has also had to dispose of expired drugs. This raises questions. The Minister must tell the nation how much money the nation lost by way of the disposed expired drugs.
For this to happen there surely could not have been proper planning. If there was proper planning then the importer must have delivered drugs that neared the expiry date.
But then again, it could be a question of record keeping and proper storage. We have had examples of the government being in possession of certain drugs but the hospital was not aware with the result that people were asked to spend money to import supplies for their ailing relatives.
Whatever the case, the government in general and the Minister of Health in particular must provide answers.

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