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On the edge of a lush jungle here in West Africa, the heavy metal doors of a warehouse creak open. Inside are boxes piled high with millions of doses of medicines donated by Merck and other pharmaceutical companies for a United States aid program. Yet the medications are gathering dust, and some are approaching their expiration dates and may have to be destroyed, at immense expense.
It’s an excellent example of the waste that President Trump claims was rife in the United States Agency for International Development. (“Absolutely obscene,” as he
put it in February.) But this waste of drugs exists only because his administration shut down U.S.A.I.D. and canceled plans to distribute these medicines, even though the pills cost America nothing and are ready to use.
Each tax dollar invested in mass administration of drugs like these leverages $26 in donated medicines, making the effort astoundingly cost-effective. One of the medications languishing in this warehouse is sufficient to protect 7.6 million children and adults from a parasitic disease called river blindness. Other donated medicines in the warehouse would rid more than two million children of worms, plus protect 1.4 million kids from a debilitating parasitic ailment called schistosomiasis that causes pain, weakness and bloody urine.
These medicines also have the side benefit of protecting against
worms that cause elephantiasis, a disfiguring and humiliating ailment….”
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