According to inspectors, Vietnam had only 91 H5N1 patients in 32 provinces from late 2003 to late 2005, but the Ministry of Health reserved up to 20 million pills, enough for 2 million patients.
The Ministry didn’t report the program to the Government or or ask its permission. They are accused of being irresponsible in assisting four pharmaceutical companies to seek good sources of materials to produce Tamiflu and also in controlling Tamiflu prices. As a result, these four companies bought 2030kg of materials to produce Tamiflu at high prices.
Former Minister Chien sent a document explaining the case to the Government Inspectorate and the Politburo on August 24.
According to Chien, inspectors didn’t find any sign of corruption or wrongdoing committed by officials or organizations under the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Finance.
However, the inspectors proposed that the Prime Minister consider this as a criminal case and transfer it to the police. Chien argued that inspectors criminalized an economic issue.
“In my opinion, the PM should assign specialized agencies like the Ministry of Finance inspectorate or the State Audit of Vietnam to make deeper research of related issues,” Chien argued.
According to Chien, this program was approved by some previous and incumbent high-ranking officials and she suggested having a meeting with the presence of these people.
She said that the plan to produce Tamiflu is the policy of the Politburo. This program was conducted by Ministries of Health, Finance, Defence and Foreign Affairs.
In an interview with VNExpress online newspaper, Chien said that Vietnam didn’t buy Tamiflu at high prices and that it was necessary to import a large volume of Tamiflu within a short period as a precaution.
She said the Government Inspectorate’s conclusion is not suitable to the situation at the time Vietnam imported Tamiflu. Moreover, this program is associated with many ministries and sectors, but inspectors only mentioned the Health Ministry’s culpability.
Chien added that, when the Prime Minister asked the Health Ministry to have Tamiflu by June 30, 2006, Roche could only supply Tamiflu to Vietnam in August. At the same time, the World Health Organisation (WHO), foreign embassies and famous experts told the ministry that a great flu epidemic would happen very soon and could transfer from human to human. The WHO even said that Vietnam might be in the most dangerous region.
“We can’t wait until many people die to buy medicine. Roche also announced that it had received many orders from many countries, so it was unsuitable to wait for Roche,” Chien opined.
“It was very lucky that the great epidemic didn’t occur, otherwise what would the situation have been?”
According to Chien, the Health Ministry worked out three plans: reserving 30 million pills for 3 million people, 20 million pills for 2 million people and 10 million pills for 1 million people. “When the WHO forecast a reduction of the epidemic, we chose the second plan,” she explained.
“Deputy PM Pham Gia Khiem also agreed with this plan,” Chien remarked.
Chien said Vietnam didn’t buy Tamiflu expensively. “As I know, our prices were not higher than at least seven countries in the region,” Chien noted.
She said that evaluating prices was the responsibility of the Ministry of Finance.
“For the health of the people, I and other officials of the Health Ministry understood that we had to implement that plan successfully. Many people currently can’t understand the big pressure we suffered at that time. We didn’t sleep for many nights to work. I would like to emphasize that there was absolutely no corruption or self-interest in this program. At that time, nobody dared to think of corruption because the lives of people were the top priority.”
Nguyen Van San, Government Inspectorate Vice-Chief, told VNExpress that inspectors strictly obeyed the laws in assessing the Ministry of Health’s import of Tamiflu. However, the final conclusion will be made by the Government. San refused to comment on Chien’s opinions.
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