Health Minister admits government corruption in medicine sales

Santo Domingo.- Members of the Police and the Justice Ministry, and Public Health officials are involved in the sale of fake medicine in Moca (north), the minister Bautista Rojas affirmed Thursday, but denied that the battle has been lost.

“My pulse hasn’t been knocked down; the fight needs to be fought. Now, I cannot do it by myself. I have to regulate the Ministry’s sale of medicine, but the repressive action and enforcement of the law correspond to other entities,” the official said, quoted by news source elnacional.com.do.

He said while he feels partly to blame for the situation because he’s been unable to defeat the fraud, he slammed the security agencies for in his view, leaving the Health Ministry to fight it alone. “I’ve spoken with the prosecutors of Espaillat province, of Moca, of the Capital, we’ve made the pertinent confiscations, shuttered outlets, but there’s complicity by everyone there, beginning with the Police, the Justice Ministry and Public Health officials themselves.”

Rojas said they’re all accomplices in Moca. “I believe we must assume a critical attitude, and ask the population not to buy those medicines, which are a swindle. The people in that activity have been charged in several occasions and those people are free doing the same.”

“There hasn’t been an action with responsibility; the Justice Ministry hasn’t accompanied us, law enforcement either. They know that those medicines sold are expired, forged contraband. There’s everything there” he said, adding that to fight that practice, “a political decision must be made, regardless of who’s in power, regardless that it’s the politicians who’re behind it.”