Like taking a lollipop...

The rumor has floated through that the Global Fund has just retracted a $40M grant that was coming to town to prevent mother-to child transmission of hiv. The grant was retracted because the $4M pilot project had an average treatment cost of $2,000 per head. The drug cost is about $1/head. The final report, I guess, looked something like this:

Cost of drugs: $2,000
Administration: $50,000
Unaccounted for: $3,948,000
---------------------------
Total: $4,000,000

No surprise they declined on the extra $40M. Somebody made out good, and the country is out $40M, which would have almost doubled the health budget. Or if you prefer, tens of thousands of children will be born with a fatal illness that could have been prevented. (not fatal in theory, but in practice.)

Who took the money? No one will ever know. And yet... if everyone knows each other, as they do, then somebody must know. In fact, it's a sure thing that some honest folk know who the corrupt folk are and what they did. But it's complicated to out someone when so many people are on the in. It's complicated, and $40M in aids money goes elsewhere.

Corruption back home always seems a little bit academic: it's company executives squirrelling away money through complex accounting scandals, political parties funding themselves through fake advertising programs... Back home, it's somehow remote, distant, it's not clear whose money is being stolen, nobody understands the mechanisms, and it doesn't affect life very much. It's wrong mainly because there are rules against it.

It seems so much more vile to be literally stealing the HIV treatment from small children. I guess believing that HIV/AIDS is a Western conspiracy offers some consolation to the thieves.