E-DRUG: Substandard Bosnia drug donations challenged In US Congress
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Two members of the US Congress are asking the Internal Revenue Service
to investigate whether pharmaceutical companies should be able to
claim tax deductions for "humanitarian" donations to war-torn Bosnia
and Herzegovina of medications that turned out to be useless.
A study in the Dec 18, 1997, issue of the New England Journal of
Medicine found that 50-60% of the estimated 27 800-34 800 tonnes of
drugs and medical materials donated to Bosnia and Herzegovina between
1992 and 1996 were inappropriate or otherwise unusable. Among items
donated were supplies from World War II, plaster tapes from 1961, and
medication for leprosy, a disease not found in the former Yugoslavia.
Most, however, were pharmaceuticals with little remaining shelflife,
leading the investigators to suggest that the donors may have been
"dumping" the medications to avoid disposal costs of approximately
US$2000 per tonne. As a result of the unusable donations, WHO has had
to come up with the funding for proper disposal.
"The people of Bosnia have suffered immeasurably. And now it appears
that drug companies and medical suppliers may have compounded this
suffering at the American taxpayer's expense", wrote Representatives
Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) and Pete Stark (Democrat, California)
in a letter to the head of the IRS, the US tax agency. The Congressmen
asked that tax deductions for the donations be denied if it is found
that drugs were purposely "dumped" to avoid destruction costs.
Julie Rovner (Lancet - News: Jan 24, 1998)
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