Stolen, expired, resold

Ashe Short has an interesting Just the News piece on investigations into U.S.-funded medical aid items stolen in Africa. The whole piece is well worth reading as UK debates about international aid seem to flop around going nowhere.

Stolen, expired, resold: USAID watchdog breaks up Kenyan pharmacy scheme

Reminiscent of Orson Welles' "The Third Man": Every stolen antibiotic or antiretroviral resold through a back-channel pharmacy represents both a taxpayer dollar that bought nothing and a patient who got an expired, mishandled, or counterfeit dose instead of treatment.

The United States Agency for International Development, Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG) has once again stopped the theft of U.S.-funded medical items...

The operation follows others performed by the OIG, which former USAID Inspector General Jonathan Schofield described on Just the News, No Noise last week...

In that interview, Schofield recounted another incident in Africa involving malaria and AIDS medication. He said that “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commodities” were being shipped every year from the U.S. to Africa, and organized groups began stealing the products.
Dozens of people all around Africa arrested

“But these are criminals, so they weren't worried too much about refrigeration. They weren't worried about expiration dates. They wouldn't tell people how to administer whatever the product was,” Schofield said. “So, people were continuing – could get sick and die.”