{"id":140208,"date":"2024-02-03T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T22:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=140208"},"modified":"2024-02-03T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T22:00:37","slug":"sri-lanka-paid-465000-for-life-saving-drugs-that-turned-out-to-be-mostly-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/02\/03\/sri-lanka-paid-465000-for-life-saving-drugs-that-turned-out-to-be-mostly-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka paid $465,000 for life-saving drugs that turned out to be mostly water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Times Malta<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Former health minister detained over fake medicines scandalWorldSri LankaHealth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Former<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Sri Lankan health minister Keheliya Rambukwella is being investigated in connection with the scam. Photo: AFP<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Sri Lankan court remanded a senior cabinet minister in custody Saturday over the purchase of fake medicines for state hospitals when he was in charge of the health portfolio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former health minister Keheliya Rambukwella was ordered to be held until February 15 pending investigations into a 144 million rupee ($465,000) scam involving what were meant to be life-saving drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police told the court in Colombo the health ministry had intended to buy a stock of the antibody immunoglobulin, which is used on immune-compromised patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the ministry paid for turned out to be mostly water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The drug had been issued to hospitals between July and September when patients reported adverse reactions triggering quality tests,” an investigator told AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not clear if there were deaths associated with the use of the fake medication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Criminal Investigations Department began questioning Rambukwella on Friday and took him before Colombo’s Maligakanda Magistrate Court, where the judge ordered his detention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several other key health ministry officials have already been arrested. Rambukwella is currently the environment minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The supplier, a local company, was to be paid 960 million rupees ($3.1 million) but the payments were stopped after the quality concerns arose in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The owner of the company is also in custody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka faced an acute shortage of medicines after the country defaulted on its $46 billion foreign debt in April 2022 after declaring bankruptcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most essential medicines were later financed through a credit line from neighbouring India, as well as the World Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Times Malta Former health minister detained over fake medicines scandalWorldSri LankaHealth Former Sri Lankan health minister Keheliya Rambukwella is being investigated in connection with the scam. Photo: AFP A Sri Lankan court remanded a senior cabinet minister in custody Saturday over the purchase of fake medicines for state hospitals when he was in charge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crimes","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}