Exposed: Sale of government drugs in foreign lands

By Adow Jubat and Boniface Ongeri

In a ward at a village health centre in Mandera District, Fardosa Issack, 38, lay on a bed having been diagnosed with a life threatening bacterial infection.

The facility’s pharmacy had run out of the drugs prescribed to treat the condition.

"A medic asked me to buy the prescribed drugs from a specific chemist in town. But the drugs had run out of stock," he painfully recalls. Her only hope lay across the border in Ethiopia. And when relatives crossed to Ethiopia they came back with the drugs.

The drugs were marked "GOK — MOH not for sale."

"We were not surprised because it was not the first time to buy our Government drugs on the other side of the border," she says.

The drugs are openly sold in private chemists across the border in Somalia and Ethiopia with the full knowledge of authorities.

During our investigations, the CCI team found eight clinics in Ethiopia border town of Suftu and seven in Somalia border town of BullaHawa openly selling the drugs. In Somalia, drugs can be purchased by either crossing the border or using drug peddlers calling themselves ‘dhakhaatiirta aan xuduuda lahyn’ (doctors without borders). The peddlers also administer drugs to patients though some incidences have often turned fatal. Early this year, an eight-year-old boy in Olla location in Rhamu Division died after he was injected by an Ethiopian peddler.

Buying Across The Border

Some of the Government of Kenya drugs our writers bought from Ethiopia. Photo: Adow Jubat

Former Mandera District Medical Officer of Health (MOH) Dr Bashir Mohammed at one time submitted the names of some jabweyns he wanted barred from the health institution to the officer commanding Mandera Police station (OCS). They made a comeback after the MOH was transferred.

Government is unaware

Mandera Police Boss Odhiambo Okello says complaints of the sale of drugs outside the country have not reached him.

"In 2007 we had reports that there were drugs being stolen from hospital but investigations didn’t come up with concrete evidence," he says. "I will use my contacts in Somalia and Ethiopia to establish how the GoK drugs end up there," Odhiambo says.

The District Criminal Investigation Officer Boaz Obetto says he is not aware of the complaints. "Our hands are full weighed down by the recent internecine clan wars," Obetto says.

Last May, during a tour of his constituency, Mandera West MP Mohammed Mumad was accosted by constituents who complained that drugs in their nearby health facilities were being sold to Ethiopia.

From Dandu to Gither, Lulis to El-Danaba, residents complained government drugs were sold across the border. Mumad promised to investigate the allegations. Mandera DC Isaiah Nakoro, however, said the health facilities had enough drugs and asked residents to stop complaining. The Mandera Hospital Superintendent Dr. Mohammed Adow declined to comment.

North Eastern Provincial Medical Officer (PMO) Dr Osman Warfa says sources of the drugs in the black market could also be from other areas.

"We carry out impromptu checks and some facilities are well run. We can’t rule out that some officers collude to sell the drugs," Dr Warfa says.

"Our hands are tied if the drugs are in Ethiopia or Somalia," he says. "We seize drugs suspected to be counterfeit to establish if they are registered. Even our national office carries out impromptu raids without our knowledge," he says.