WoW part 2

More from Elizabeth Pisani:
"Procurement is an enduring nightmare for people working with US funds. That’s because the great, free-trading, open market economy of the US has laws that channel its overseas development dollars back to companies at home. If you want to give out wheat to starving people or infant formula milk to the babies of HIV infected women, you have to buy them in the US. Condoms, computer equipment, cars—they all have to come from US manufacturers at US prices. USAID has bought some 9 billion condoms for family planning and HIV prevention programs since the mid 1980s. Most of them come from Alabama at a cost of around 5c each. The American taxpayer then pays to ship them to countries like Indonesia, India, and China, where they would have cost 2c a piece to buy. Americans have spent $270 million more than they needed to on condoms. That would pay for a lot of retraining for factory workers in Alabama. And it doesn’t include shipment costs, which are substantial. The Buy American policy has produced some wonderful carbon footprints. A condom used in East Timor and made in Alabama of Sumatran latex has traveled 20,200 miles.

"With drugs it is even worse because they have to be approved by the US FDA. That puts lots of drugs that are cheap, practical and widely used in developing countries off limits. Instead we have to buy sophisticated US formulations that require cold storage. In the East Timor study, for example, we were testing for syphilis and offering free treatments for any cases we found. The standard treatment, the (long word) penicillin, cost about $1.50 a dose in neighbouring Indonesia. … Because of the Buy American Act, which dates from 1933, I have to shell out $71.15 a dose for some product in fancy-schmancy packaging made in Tennessee and then I have to get it from Tennessee to a clinic in the sweltering dust bowl that is Dili, keeping it between 4 and 8 degrees centigrade all the while. My $100 is starting to look like $10,000.”
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