Aids drugs worth billions left to expire in Ugandan warehouses

http://allafrica.com/stories/200707110814.html

It is morally repugnant that millions of dollars worth of Malaria, ARV Drugs should be rotting in National Medical Stores (NMS) in Uganda while thousands of Ugandans perish everyday of HIV/Aids and malaria without treatment. According the Monitor News in Kampala, MPs on the Social Services Committee were shocked to find eight containers of 2- feet, full of expired drugs. The reason given for this sad state of affairs is that, “big volumes of the drugs that expire have a short life span and are brought in by foreign NGOs including the Clinton Foundation, Global Fund, Aids Control Programme, Malaria Control Programme without proper planning. According to local officials, "NMS is not involved in the planning or procurement of these items,” but are expected to accept all consignments of big volumes of short-lived drugs-which are sometimes already procured by NMS- at very short notice without much of a distribution plan or coordination with NMS. Officials believe that they can only minimize these loses if NMS is given power to perform its statutory mandate of procurement, storage and distribution of drugs. According to Rukiga MP Samuel Byanangwa, "These donors should be told how work. How can they bring in drugs and then fail to distribute them? Uganda is not a dumping ground."
HIV AIDS has gained so much emotional and moral currency that it has become so easy to pick out as an issue where any and all mistakes get a whole lot of attention. But when one looks at the whole picture on the ground evidence points to an endemic problem of poor planning, inefficiency, and a lack of coordination among governments and some foreign NGOs, which overall decreases potential gains for the poor people waiting for help. On one level, foreign NGOs come in armed with a great deal of distrust of local governments and blue prints of programs in response to the generic media image of the poverty and needs of Africa. In such cases, governments are somehow supposed to just swallow whatever is thrown at them because the cost of not doing so is very high given the moral issues surrounding HIV AIDS. In some cases, as is demonstrated above, it may not be good to accept the donation for practical reasons. But, then you also have governments who have been known to misuse AID for political gains. Examples are rife in which food aid destined for the poor and frail ends up among the strong and morally weak officials.
Far from the HIV AIDS issue that gives a lot of political and economic capital to many of the people involved, a lesser known problem is that far more women and children die from the inefficiency pandemic when they cannot get to hospitals on time because of bad or no roads, when food cannot be delivered to them on time, and when other basic needs are inaccessible even in a sea of plenty. In fact, the whole case above is really a microcosm of the larger inefficiency of entire countries and very much the cause of many other problems.
The question then becomes why foundations should be pilling these drugs in one country when other countries equally need them? Is it that Uganda has been billed as a success story serving as a fountain from which everyone can quench their thirst of doing something successful in some far away country when the Times reveals that, yes, the country is doing well? Why is there unequal distribution of drugs, even in countries known to have high prevalence rates of these diseases?
I am equally appalled by the inferiority complex that pervades some of our African brothers in governments who have come to believe that unless donors provide the ideas, the drugs, the money, and the cars, they will do nothing even when their house is on fire. There is the temptation to cling to the, “they owe us” mentality all the way into paralysis and incapacity to even wipe one’s behind waiting for the colonizers who took away our resources to bring us paper. At a certain point, we have to say, yes we know who the arsonists are, but funeralizing our predicament will only serve as us emotionally, but not meet our needs to be under a new roof, of a new house- a better house. To get there, we have to SANKOFA-acknowledge our history, but gravitate towards our own advancement. And it is only then that we may begin to be free. Free the mind, then the body will follow! Amandla!