HEALTH Minister, Dr Bheri Ramsaran on Friday evening debunked a Kaieteur News article which implied that the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation (GPC) is being favoured in its bid for the supply of malaria drugs.
Besides contending that the evaluation process is yet to be completed, and that as such it was too early to pronounce on the issue, Minister Ramsaran said

malaria is a serious public health threat, and should not be trifled with.
He said the Ministry of Health has, over the years, with national partners such as PAHO, worked out treatment modules that include the purchase of expensive medication which are tried and tested.

“The Ministry of Health intends to stick to those treatment regimes. In this regard, the Ministry of Health advertised for companies to bid for the supply of such drugs. Such drugs would include, for example, the much tried and tested coartem,” he said, adding:
“The Ministry of Health still maintains that drug as part of its treatment regime, one of the main prongs of its treatment regime to roll back malaria. We are not about to change that treatment regime since it is supported by the findings and research of reputable international support organisations and the findings of our malaria control programme.”
He said he has noted that there is an implied allegation of impropriety on the part of the ministry and the government by entertaining certain bids from the New GPC; bids which are allegedly significantly higher than bids of another company, International Pharmaceutical Agency (IPA).
“I would like to point out that at this very early stage, the bids have just been opened and the evaluation of these bids has to be done according to established procedure of the evaluation committee. I would like also to point out that the discrepancy between the amounts of monies that are indicated in the article may well be explained when this evaluation process would have been completed. The Ministry of Health awaits that report and by extension the Government of Guyana awaits that report,” he said.
The Health Minister said that it is quite interesting to note that the two companies are supposed to bid for several anti- malaria drugs, however at this stage, it is not clear which drugs the companies presented bids for.
“We need to look at those, some of these drugs look quite expensive and it would be useful for use to await the evaluation process which is a law governed process, fixed menu of measures that will be undertaken to see that the companies for example are compliant and that the drugs that they are bidding for are for example those that are in the original bid document and such other factors.”
He said that it is the function of the evaluation committee to determine if each company bid for all the drugs and whether those that were specified in the document.
“In the meantime, I want to point out that this is a scandalous article, it’s an unfortunate article because it distracts, and I think this is deliberate, the Guyanese public from more interesting and more importing things that are going on in the national arena,” Dr Ramsaran stated.
He concluded that it is a very early stage of the process, the evaluation is yet to be done, and there are several pieces of information that are not presented in those articles that would be useful to the Guyanese public before such an evaluation is made or such a conclusion is drawn that there is such a big variation of such a big difference.
“It could quite well be that the drugs that IPA is presenting its bid for are different from those that the new GPC is presenting its bid for. We need to evaluate that, we need to review that data, the information out of the bid documents before we jump to conclusions so I want to warn the Guyanese public that while we are fully behind press freedom there must also be responsibility how this information is treated. This is the very early stage of the evaluation process and I am confident that that process will be done in a transparent manner which will allow us to have in the end the information which is needed to decide which one at least which one of these companies should be awarded the contract.” (GINA)