It took just one week for police to find the culprits responsible for the disappearance of nearly $35,000 worth of vaccines
Ko Pauk, a night watchman who has worked for several years at the central vaccine storehouse on Min Dhama road in Yangon, started the New Year facing intense scrutiny from the police.
Days earlier, he and his colleagues had been braving sub-zero temperatures in a refrigerated storeroom, doing a complete end-of-year inventory of the depot’s supply of vaccines.
To their consternation, they discovered that they were missing 480 doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, 700 doses of the vaccine for severe pneumonia, and 5,810 doses of the HPV vaccine, used to prevent cervical cancer. In total, 46 million kyat ($34,600) worth of vaccines had disappeared.
At first they thought there might have been a shipping error. But after checking and double-checking their records and confirming the amounts they had sent to hospitals, they concluded that theft was the only possible explanation.
At this point, Ko Pauk began to worry. Since he spent his nights at the storehouse, he knew that he would come under suspicion.
He sounded angry as he recalled his thoughts at the time.
“I don’t know who took these drugs. If I knew, I would say so right away. Now even I am under a cloud, as I often go in and out of the freezer room,” he said of his initial reaction.
This was the first time anything like this had ever happened at the vaccine storehouse. With two people guarding it around the clock, it was difficult for anyone who worked there to imagine how a thief—or thieves—could have made off with so much of their supply.
It was on December 28 that health officials first learned about the missing vaccines. They immediately reported the matter to the police, and together they began an investigation. All 14 employees at the depot, including some young staff members who were new to their jobs there, were grilled over the next 24 hours. But the investigators came up empty.
“They wanted to know everything. They asked me what I did before I got this job,” said Ko Pauk. “And they talked to everyone. They even sent some young people who know nothing to the police station.”
Following the trail
With no security cameras installed anywhere in the facility, and with no leads emerging from the testimony of employees, police were forced to look elsewhere for evidence.
According to Thant Zin Oo, a police sub-lieutenant at the Bayintnaung police station in Mayangone township, six teams were formed to search local pharmacies for the stolen vaccines.
They soon got a lucky break. Their efforts turned up a vial of the HPV vaccine that had the same lot number as one of the missing batches.
They made this discovery at a pharmacy on 27th Street in Pabedan township on December 29. After raiding the home of Tin Aye (also known as Mohammed Eliak), the owner of the pharmacy, they found another 72 doses of the HPV vaccine.
Further investigation revealed that Tin Aye purchased the vaccines from someone he identified as Sloda Juu, a pharmaceutical dealer who sells to his customers over the phone.
Sloda Juu, who also goes by the name Soe Myint, became their next target.
Finding the insider
A raid on Sloda Juu’s home yielded four more boxes of misappropriated medicine and revealed his inside source: a junior clerk at the central vaccine depot named Wunna Tun.
On January 4, one week after the vaccines were first reported missing, police announced that they had arrested three suspects in the case, including Sloda Juu and Wunna Tun, and named three more.
Thant Zin Oo, the police sub-lieutenant, said Wunna Tun had smuggled drugs out of the storehouse on two occasions, each time while staff and guards were on their lunch break. His main distributor was Sloda Juu, he added.
Almost all of the missing vaccines were recovered. Only 297 of the 5,810 missing doses of the HPV vaccine could not be accounted for.
Thant Zin Oo condemned the theft of the vaccine from the central storehouse, as it had been set aside to be given free of charge to girls between the ages of 9 and 14 to help protect them from the risk of contracting cervical cancer later in life.
Each dose of the vaccine sold for 33,000 kyat ($25) on the black market, he said, while private hospitals and clinics offered it at an even heftier price—150,000 kyat ($112) per dose.
He added that while this was the first such case that local police had prosecuted, it was likely that the scale of the problem was much bigger than previously realized.
“We never know how big the black market is,” he said.
Dr Khin Khin Gyi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Sports, also highlighted the importance of public access to vaccines. He noted that illnesses that are easily prevented with a vaccine can have a devastating impact on poor families.
Case closed
Police said that all six suspects would be charged under section 6(1) of the Protection of Public Property Act, which carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison, a lashing, or both, as well as a fine.
Wunna Tun is accused of smuggling the drugs out of the storehouse in bags used to dispose of waste.
Although he managed to act without attracting the suspicion of his colleagues and was able to pass the initial police investigation, he has since confessed to his crimes.
Ko Pauk, the security guard who feared he would end up behind bars, said that he and the rest of the staff were relieved that the case was resolved so swiftly.
“There was a great possibility that I would have been accused of taking the vaccines, because I stay here 24 hours a day. I was also worried about some of our young staff members. If Wunna Gyi hadn’t confessed, we could all have ended up in prison.”
Donate
Independent media is under attack in Myanmar... help us hold the powerful to account.
