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Home > English > More information > Unusable medicines “dumped” on Venezuela
Unusable medicines "dumped" on Venezuela by Claire Wallerstein, Caracas Published in the British Medical Journal, June 2000.Six months after devastating floods and landslides left up to 30,000
people dead or missing and 200,000 homeless, Venezuela is being inundated again by a flood of unusable medical aid. Harrowing television pictures of the disaster last December in the coastal states of Vargas and Falcon,
near Caracas, sparked a massive humanitarian response, and tones of medicines are still arriving from all around the world.However, health workers helping the victims say that huge quantities of medical aid remain stockpiled in
warehouses, and up to 70% of it will have to be incinerated. A report by the government's Pharmacological Production Service (Servicio de Elaboraciones Farmacologicas) says many products cannot be used because they are
out of date, unnecessary, have been partially used, or have no Spanish labeling. As a result, the government has already had to spend at least 10m bolivars (£10,000, $16,000) to hire extra staff and increase working
hours simply to classify what has been received.Dr Francisco Griffin, director general of the service, said some companies had even deliberately sent expired products considered as toxic waste to evade the cost of having to deal with them
themselves. The World Health Organization set guidelines to help improve aid provision after the war in Kosovo, where it was estimated that the cost of destroying unusable products exceeded their original value.
However, DR Griffin accepted that the production
service had not anticipated such a massive international response to the landslides. When the disorganized nature of the donations and the "titanic work" required to sort through them became clear, adverts
were belatedly posted on the web sites of international organizations asking only for specifically requested products.Meanwhile, a telephone help line set up by a group of psychologists from Caracas University to help the
victims, and which went on to become a successful Samaritans-style support line for all the people of the capital, has had to close down. The service has run out of funds, and the Department of Health says it cannot
afford to help. Fears are also growing that last year's disaster is set to recur, because hundreds of displaced people have returned to their collapsing shanties, built on steep hillsides in the poorest areas of Caracas.
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