The corruption involving Honey Bee and Dr Chitalu Chilufya in summary.
There is a product that is called “Rural Health Centre Kit”. In Medical Stores, that’s what it is called. It is a kit that comprises of up to 60 different drugs and other pharmaceutical products like surgicals as well. For over two decades, this has always been supplied by a company called Mission Pharma from India. There has always been a framework contract for the supply of this Kit. Over the years, MoH has been failing to make full payments for this product but supplies from the supplier have always been done.
Fast Forward. In 2018, Mission Pharma told MoH that they were not going to supply the next scheduled consignment until they made a payment of what they were owed for the past deliveries. The Ministry relaxed and never took this very serious until hospitals and clinics completely ran out of this commodity. That is when they decided to do an emergency procurement. Note that at this time they were doing the emergency tender for this quick procurement, Mission Pharma had stocks of up to 40,000 Kits in the Industrial Area warehouse on Mungwi Road. Generally, the supply has always been of 11,600 Kits per delivery by Mission Pharma to MSL.
Now because Mission Pharma had asked MoH to pay something towards what they were owing, they (MoH) decided to change supplier of the Kits. This is how they did the emergency Tender and was awarded to HoneyBee Pharmacy, which is a retail shop apparently. You will also need to note that HoneyBee quoted $17m while Mission Pharma quoted $12m for the same bid. However, MoH saw it fit to award HoneyBee disregarding all the rest of the bidders. MoH and ZAMRA did everything they could in there power to make sure that HoneyBee got the tender. This is the reason why HoneyBee only got a Pharmaceutical License 6 days before the tender was advertised. This license was approved and delivered to HoneyBee on a Sunday when they were not supposed to be working in ZAMRA. In fact, inspections and award of license were done on a Saturday and Sunday, despite having found 17 defects of the HoneyBee warehouse.
Fast Forward. When HoneyBee was awarded the $17m tender, the Kit they supplied had certain drugs missing inside like Diazepam. There was also a product whose strength was half the full dosage required. Gloves and condoms failed QC. There were 3 batches for the glove of which 2 failed. There was also 2 batch numbers for the condoms which both failed QC. But you see, at the time of these laboratory tests at ZABS, MSL had already started distribution of these Kits to the facilities.
When ZABS had completed the tests, they sent the results back to MSL and ZAMRA. ZAMRA then decided to do other tests for a second opinion by sending samples to Zimbabwe. They never informed MoH, for whatever reasons, that they had decided to send more samples to Zimbabwe. They chose to inform MoH that they were also still waiting for the Lab results.
So to answer your question as to what happened to the condoms, They failed QC but were still delivered to hospitals and clinics. Note also that the gloves failed QC as well but were still supplied to the hospitals and clinics. Gloves in hospitals and clinics are used by our medical personnel handling all types of patients and hazardous stuff. Imagine the defective condoms. One Kit alone contains up to about 600 pieces of condoms. Just one Kit is capable of putting 600 lives at risk of HIV and other infections.