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Comment…Why is Dr. Ramsammy still involved?

Jan 23, 2013 News

Former Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, and now Minister of Agriculture could have caused Guyana to repay millions of dollars to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
When Guyana began reporting on its AIDS rate, Dr. Ramsammy told the world that Guyana was next to Haiti in terms of a high rate in the Caribbean. He placed Guyana’s AIDS rate at four per cent.
Given this reported rate, the managers of the PEPFAR fund immediately poured money into Guyana because they considered Guyana to be at a critical stage. Guyana alone enjoyed funding to the tune of US$4 million per annum.
The Americans had also recognized that Guyanese were heading to the United States in droves, so the heightened PEPFAR funding was part of efforts by the United States to help itself. The truth was that Guyana’s AIDS rate was less than two per cent at the time.
Investigations by the various non-governmental agencies, and by the United States itself, uncovered the truth. To his credit, Dr. Ramsammy then said that Guyana had no way of really ascertaining the rate of infection, hence the reported high rate. The Americans have since debunked this contention.
Already, in one African country the managers of the AIDS fund have withheld further funding until the millions have been repaid to the fund.
Funding has also been halted to Guyana, but the reason given is that the money is being shared around the Caribbean. With the cut in funding, Guyana saw the closure of many programmes, among them Guyana HIV/AIDS Reduction and Prevention Programme (GHARP), GPlus and the Global Fund Programmes.
But before all this happened, Dr. Ramsammy was arranging for the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation to enjoy the windfall. The New GPC was positioned to produce anti-retroviral drugs. The company brought the raw materials from India and set about producing what should have been the drugs for use by people in Guyana afflicted by AIDS.
The drugs were subjected to rigorous testing and at every level the Government Analyst Food and Drugs Department found problems with quality control. When it seemed that the drugs would not pass muster, Dr. Ramsammy ordered head of the Government Analyst Food and Drug department, Marilyn Collins, to approve the drugs produced by New GPC.
The threat was so real that Ms. Collins even refused to have anything more to do with the programme.
Meanwhile New GPC sent the drugs to laboratories in Canada and Jamaica for testing, even as Guyana was preparing to sell the anti retroviral drugs throughout the Caribbean.
The idea never got off the ground. When New GPC halted the attempts to produce the AIDS drugs, Dr. Ramsammy never told the nation. Neither did he offer a reason.
Today he continues to rush to the defence of New GPC, which has been a cash cow for some.

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