Exposure — ONLINE DOCUMENTARIES

 

She also discovered sadly that of all the tonnes of drugs donated, only a small proportion could actually be termed useful, shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Americares

 

We got hold of an internal WHO report which studied drug donations in Albania in 1999. It documented several donations that were “conspicuous by their size and inappropriateness”, one of which was a donation from American Home Products via a charity called Americares, of painkillers which had only 5 months left before it expired.

American Home Products has since changed its name to Wyeth and we thought that seeing as Wyeth were so found of giving, we’d respond in kind. We got 450,000 US coins (a ton in weight) in a flat bed truck and drove them to Wyeth’s UK headquarters. Mark then donated these coins to Wyeth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They didn’t want our donation and asked us to take it away and wouldn’t answer our questions, saying that Americares would reply on their behalf.

True enough, Americares did so and said that the Albanian Ministry of Health were aware that the drugs were short dated before they were sent and still said they were needed.

Thinking we needed a bit of insight into why the Albanians would do this we spoke to Claudi Curchillo again from Pharmaciens Sans Frontieres about what he thought their reasons could be.

Claudi said in his experience countries would not refuse any donations for fear of offending the donor and also in case this would mean they wouldn’t make any future donations which could include drugs that were badly needed.

 

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