Indus hospital committed $4.2m fraud in TB grant: Report

ISLAMABAD: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international financing organization, has alleged that Indus Hospital had committed a $4.2 million procurement fraud in a grant to eradicate tuberculosis (TB).

According to a report published on Arab News, the Global Fund’s Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation into procurement fraud activities committed by Indus Hospital between January 2016 and December 2018 and published its report last month.

“The investigation uncovered $4.2 million in non-compliant expenses,” the Fund said in an email response to questions from Arab News. “The Global Fund strongly condemns the acts of fraud committed by The Indus Hospital TB Program,” the organization said.

As per report, the Global Fund also cut off the Indus Hospital as of December 31, 2020, and was transferring activities to Mercy Corps and the National TB Program, both of whom were existing grant recipients.

Dr. Nasim Akhtar, the Pakistan government’s national program manager for TB, said the Global Fund had exposed the fraud through its own mechanism for transparency as part of its monitoring and evaluation of funds.

“The Indus Hospital is no more a recipient of the grant; it is an embarrassment for us,” she said, adding, “We are now undertaking different administrative changes to make utilization of the funds transparent.”

Meanwhile, the CEO of Indus Hospital rejected any possibility of fraud, saying the hospital had a “strict mechanism” to utilize funds. “We have responded to the investigation report and let’s see how they [The Global Fund] take it,” Dr. Abdul Bari Khan told Arab News.

Pakistan — which records an estimated 510,000 new TB cases each year, with approximately 15,000 people developing drug resistant TB strains annually — is ranked fifth among high-burden countries worldwide.

The organization mobilizes and invests more than $4 billion a year to support programs run by local experts in more than 100 countries, including Pakistan, to fight tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria.