Malaria Medications Suspected Stolen From Global Fund in Africa
April 20, 2011, 5:37 PM EDTBy Jeffrey Young
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Malaria medications valued at almost $2.3 million may have been stolen from government-run distribution centers in Africa and other locations, according to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The organization, founded in 2002, paid for the medicines and is investigating whether drug thefts are increasing worldwide as it quantifies its missing inventory, Jon Liden, a spokesman for the Geneva-based Global Fund, said in a telephone interview.
The Global Fund, an independent entity funded by national governments and private entities including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, spent $21.7 billion in 150 countries from 2002 through 2010 to combat the three diseases. The organization is subject to the “perennial problem” of drug theft in developing countries, Liden said.
“Yes, there’s drug theft in Africa,” he said. “These are not Global Fund-specific issues.”
The Global Fund suspects its malaria drugs may have been stolen in 13 countries and that 70 percent of the thefts were by insiders at government-distribution centers, Linden said. The Associated Press reported the thefts today based on internal Global Fund documents, adding that countries under scrutiny include Tanzania, Togo, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Nigeria, Kenya and Cambodia.
The Global Fund financed the purchase of $98 million in malaria medicine in the 13 countries during the past 2 1/2 years and is looking into how much may have been stolen, the organization said in a statement today. Togo has repaid $600,000 of $850,000 in drugs the Global Fund confirmed as stolen, according to the statement.
Prevention Plans
“The Global Fund is at the forefront of the response to drug theft” and “has acted upon each instance of misuse of its resources taking strong and swift action by suspending grants, freezing cash disbursements and demanding a return of misused funds,” the organization said.
The Global Fund called together other funders of medicines for people in developing countries in December to devise plans to prevent thefts of drugs in Africa and elsewhere, Liden said. “The aim is a range of measures we mean to take to minimize theft of drugs,” he said.
Among the options under consideration are hiring new security companies to guard the medicines and setting up distribution centers on a temporary basis to operate in place of government-run systems in countries where theft is suspected, he said.
U.S. Leading Contributor
The U.S. is the largest contributor to the Global Fund. The U.S. has donated $5.13 billion to the organization since its creation, accounting for 28 percent of financing from national governments, according to Global Fund data.
Private donors have given $957.6 million, led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, created by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, which has given $650 million to the entity. Chevron Corp. of San Ramon, California, has donated $30 million and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. of Osaka, Japan, has provided $1.08 million.
The World Health Organization reported 247 million cases of malaria and almost 1 million deaths in 2008, most of whom were African children. The disease is spread through mosquito bites and causes fever, headache, chills and vomiting and can be fatal if not treated, according to the World Health Organization in Geneva.
--Editors: Steve Walsh, Adriel Bettelheim
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeffrey Young in Washington at jyoung89@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim at abettelheim@bloomberg.net.
