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Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize
- The Health Ministry said intermediaries were charging SA up to four times the price of the vaccine.
- Zweli Mkhize said SA will negotiate directly with manufacturers in an effort to prevent corruption.
- He said the country could not pre-order vaccines during the testing phases due to lack of resources.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said the government stopped dealing with intermediaries to obtain vaccines for fear of overpricing, corruption and possible faulty vaccines.
In an interview with News24, Mkhize said that talks with one company, which was acting as an intermediary between manufacturers and the government, were dropped when they asked four times the price of vaccines offered directly by manufacturers.
“There is a long delay around the world and some of the countries that have asked five or eight times their population needs have not yet received the exact amount of vaccines. Now you may fall into a trap of despair and may In fact, you have to be deceived, you have to be very careful with all that kind of thing, “he said.
The minister said South Africa did not want to burn its fingers as it did less than a year ago when acquiring personal protective equipment (PPE) and diagnostic kits amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw intermediaries overcharge the government, as faulty stocks are handed over and corruption rampant.
“There are some intermediaries who offered us vaccines. One, for example, offered us at a cost of about four times the price we were already negotiating with the manufacturers. We asked them why [they] do that, and they said, well, we have things here with us … If it turns out to be corruption, who do you explain it to? “
Mkhize said they had learned from the EPP debacle and could not repeat last year.
READ | ‘Not realistic’: SA’s vaccine plan surprises ahead of launch
“The second problem is, if we get it from a middleman, we have to go to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the supplier. We just had a big problem now when we were dealing with PPE. We ended up with bad-sized, hard-size PPE. quality.
“What we find during the PPE time, and also with the diagnostic kits, can sometimes make the company record things, and when the delivery time comes, they find that things are replaced by something that is not the right thing. same as the original company promised. “
‘You will be hanged’
Mkhize said that formidable progress had been made in the vaccine negotiations and insisted that the government would honor its commitment to vaccinate two-thirds of the population.
One million vaccines from the Serum Institute of India will be delivered by the end of this month, while another 500,000 will be delivered next month.
“The problem with a lot of people here, they think this is very simplistic. Because the UK was able to do it, South Africa should be able to do it, it isn’t.”
When asked what the difference was, the minister said it was a question of resources.
He said:
The difference is that other countries obtained more resources than the South African economy has. In fact, they could put money in and even if that money is lost, that’s fine. You can’t do that in South Africa. Tomorrow you will be hanged for spending money. You will be criticized for money thrown down the drain.
Mkhize said that if there was a delay in the talks, it was because the government had to first consider the reasonable probability of success in vaccine trials.
The government has been criticized for its delay in securing bilateral deals to procure the vaccine, but Mkhize said the government could not do what other countries did: pre-order without proof that the trials would be successful.
“Our system doesn’t work like that. We couldn’t put money into something that we can’t prove works. There was no way we could have done that,” he said.
