Dear Editor,
I noticed that in a recent release regarding the now infamous pharmaceutical award to ANSA McAL, ‘officials’ from the Public Health Ministry have been quoted as saying that many of the drugs which are imported and supplied come from Third World countries. Wow!
It’s a fact that the overwhelming quantity and type of drugs being imported outside of Europe and North America come from India. The comment from the officials of the MoPH has to mean only one country – ‘India”. I agree that India is a Third World country, but not because the imports are coming from India it means that the imports are bad, unfit, are of poor quality, or are smuggled into Guyana.
Third World India, depending on the yardstick you use, has the third to fifth largest economy in the world. It is responsible for hundreds of technical (albeit Third World) graduates of scholarship awards to Guyanese; It provides tens of millions of Third World US dollars in grants and gifts to Guyana; Its Third World brain and leadership keep the USA and UK economies at First World status because of the brain power and financial investments it provides.
India can supply the medication to cure the foot-and-mouth disease which these MoPH officials seem to have contracted. The Indian High Commission should take umbrage at this comment.
Guyana’s drug crisis, I do agree with Minister Lawrence, is man-made. Singularly, this department has slowed the importation of drugs into Guyana. The long delays and piecemeal discoveries of lacked documentation have caused long delays and increased costs by as much as six to eight per cent. Most of the “original certificates and extra documentation that are required cost importers as much as US$500 and another US$200 demurrage, in addition to the time delays. These factors, coupled with the VAT of 14 per cent, will drive up the cost of medication by at least 25 per cent.
I am confident that if the FDD had applied the same standards to the ANSA McAL importation – ie: for every item, original certificates from the manufacturer along with the certificates from the originating country – these emergency drugs would still not have been supplied!
Yours sincerely,
Manzoor Nadir
