Arrests in Connection With Illegal Sale of Medicines

24 May 2011

Maputo — The Mozambican police have detained nine people in Nhamatanda district, in the central province of Sofala, in connection with the illegal sale of medicines in informal markets.

The detentions and the seizure of the medicines concerned were carried out by a joint brigade from the police and the Health Ministry.

Alberto Mualinque, the Nhamatanda District Director of Health, Women’s Affairs and Social Welfare, cited in Tuesday’s issue of the Beira daily “Diario de Mocambique”, said that his department had received denunciations from citizens about the illegal sales in three informal markets. This had led to inspection of the markets, and eventually arrests.

Mualinque said that the medicines and equipment seized included goods that can only be distributed through the national health system, and so had presumably been stolen. Among them were anti-retroviral drugs, which prolong the lives of HIV-positive people, anti-malarial and anti-tuberculosis drugs, and mosquito nets intended to protect pregnant women.

Some of the drugs were past their expiry date, and others, exposed to all weathers, were no longer fit for human consumption. The medicines were all incinerated on Saturday. Mualinque said that, before they had deteriorated, these drugs were worth over 187,000 meticais (about 6,230 US dollars).

“Medicines are being stolen from the National Health System”, he said. “There must be a network of thieves diverting medicines onto the informal market. This damages the state which spends large sums to acquire these goods”.

He said the health ministry is deeply concerned because badly conserved medicines sold in the squalor of informal markets, by people who are not pharmacists, can be life threatening.

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