Bloodsuckers!

Tuesday 21st November, 2023

Has the government begun to realise the futility of defending the indefensible? It has chosen to heed strident calls being made for action against the corrupt who are enriching themselves by endangering the lives of patients and causing enormous losses to the state coffers.

After weeks of dilly-dallying, the CID has arrested four health officials for the procurement of a stock of substandard intravenous human immunoglobulin (IVIG) and misappropriating a huge amount of public funds. Those mandarins should have been arrested a long time ago immediately after the lid was blown off the drug racket at issue.

When arrests are postponed, the culprits have ample time to cover their tracks. They can even wipe out databases and eliminate incriminating evidence. One may recall that in 2021, nearly 6, 000 files were deleted from the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) database, pertaining to controversial pharmaceutical deals among other things.

Last month, following several complaints of serious allergic reactions caused by IVIG in a number of state-run hospitals, the NMRA said a dossier of forged documents had been submitted by a local pharmaceutical company for the release of a consignment of IVIG from the Customs, but the foreign supplier who was named as the exporter denied either producing or exporting the drug. Health professionals who are on a mission to combat corruption in the health sector and safeguard the interests of patients revealed that thousands of phials of IVIG had been produced locally from blood fraudulently obtained from the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS). The pharmaceutical racket cost the state coffers as much as Rs. 130 million.

The IVIG scam has the potential to tarnish the image of the NBTS, and discourage blood donors thus adversely impacting blood donation campaigns. A high-level probe must therefore be conducted to find out how some of the blood donated to the NBTS found its way into the hands of the racketeers responsible for ‘producing’ IVIG. No less a person than Health Minister Dr. Ramesh Pathirana has said that it is not possible to manufacture IVIG in Sri Lanka.

The CID, we believe, is scratching the surface of the problem, which is far more complex than it looks. The suspects taken into custody have been described as high-ranking health officials, but, in our book, they are only sprats in an ocean of corruption, where sharks are having a whale of a time at the expense of the public, especially the sick. The suspects would not have been able to carry out their sordid operations without the blessings of the political authority. Behind every mega corrupt deal in this country, there is a politician. What action will the CID take against the government politicians on whose watch the drug rackets took place?

The government unashamedly defended the health officials under a cloud to the hilt. About two months ago, it went so far as to defeat the Opposition’s no-faith motion against the then Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella; it pooh-poohed the allegations of corruption against him and his bureaucratic lackeys. Subsequently, President Ranil Wickremesinghe effected a mini Cabinet reshuffle and appointed Rambukwella the Minister of Environment.

If Rambukwella had not been removed from the Health Ministry, perhaps it would not have been possible to take action against the racketeers responsible for the IVIG scam. One, however, should not be so naïve as to expect the ongoing investigations into the health sector pharmaceutical rackets to reach fruition with the corrupt being brought to justice.

Health Minister Dr. Pathirana has evinced a keen interest in cleaning the Health Ministry, we are told, but he is too timid to take on the corrupt with might and main unlike his Cabinet colleague, Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe. The government has demonstrated its partiality to crooks by trying to derail Minister Ranasinghe’s campaign to rid cricket of corruption. So, Health Minister Dr. Pathirana has his work cut out.

One can only hope that the health professionals and trade unions will stay focused and crank up pressure on the government lest it should get the crooks off the hook.