Republic of the Congo Health System: an endless feast for crooked businessmen and the presidential family.

[Toronto, June 5, 2024] – Infant and maternal mortality rates are significant indicators of a population’s overall health and health systems’ effectiveness. In the Republic of Congo, these statistics, with approximately 56 deaths per 1000 live births, mark the State of health disaster in which the country is plunged.

Rural maternity wards without beds and gutted roofs from which rainwater falls on the faces of women who give birth on the ground. Our field investigations in some rural areas in the north and south of the country were shocking, given the advanced degree of deterioration of integrated health centers. Regarding infrastructure, the Congolese health system is in disarray despite the colossal investments; approximately 25% of the annual health budget has been devoted to creating new hospitals since 2014. ASPERBRAS, a company with no previous achievements in the construction of hospitals and whose manager is being prosecuted for money laundering, was entrusted with the most ambitious investment project in health since independence. Planned for 37 months, the 12 general hospitals project by Asperbras has become a bottomless pit of Congolese public finances. The first works, unfinished/unused, are already falling into disrepair, and additional budgets are disbursed, but the operator does nothing.      

The supply of medicines is in the hands of a cartel chaired since 1948 by CFAO, the French West African Company, a colonial concessionary company. Because of that colonial monopoly, essential medicines for child survival are sold at up to 10 times the international reference price.

By compiling the amounts of evacuations from the operation mandate received by nature of the 2019 fiscal year budget, we obtain the estimate of one hundred and forty-three billion, nine hundred and ninety million, four hundred and fifty-seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three FCFA (143,990,457,823).  This amount represents almost the entire health budget for the financial year. It remains impossible to know what criteria these evacuation benefits abroad are allocated. The health budget is mainly used to enrich the military-political-administrative class and for medical evacuations of its members to Europe, Turkey, Morocco, South Africa, or India.

Here are the Key findings of the “One Country… Two Health Systems”  report by Sassoufit Collective : 

1. The cost of medical evacuations abroad represented almost the entire 2019 health budget. The criteria for the State’s support of this are not known.
   
2. Decree 2013-691 of October 21, 2013, creates a hospital reserved for the President and his family. This hospital, inaugurated in 2015, remained unused before undergoing renovation in 2021 for four billion two hundred million FCFA.
   
3. Three main national foundations also deal with health. The Congo Assistance Foundation, created by Madame Sassou Nguesso, is the oldest and declares oil companies as its donor/partner; the Generation À Venir Foundation under Swiss and Congolese law, of which Edgar Nguesso is honorary President, and the Perspectives d’Avenir Foundation, founded by Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso. The sources of funding for Edgar and Denis Christel’s foundations are unknown.
   
4. ASPERBRAS Congo, a company with no experience in hospital construction, was appointed in 2014 for the Ministry of Health’s most ambitious project since independence. The projects were to be carried out in 37 months for 30 billion FCFA, approximately 25% of the 2015 health budget. The project is still incomplete despite a budget extension of five hundred billion FCFA allocated to continue the construction in 2022.
   
5. RAYZONE GROUP: For four hundred forty-four million and thirty thousand FCFA, or approximately 2% of the COVID fund, the Ministry ordered a COVID geolocation application from this Israeli company via Chérif Aidara, the husband of Minister Lydia MIKOLO. Despite a 100% deposit before delivery on May 28, 2020, there is no trace as of March 2024 of deployment or delivery of the application.
   
6. PAMI Partner, formerly Serenity Spa, is a Swiss company owned by Judicaelle Mouandinga Darboux Okemba, the daughter of Jean-Dominique Okemba, the boss of the Congolese secret services and chairman of the board of directors of BGFI Congo. In 2022, the annual report of the General Directorate for Public Procurement Control mentions Pami Partner in the list of contracts awarded for a total amount of 2,880,203,909 FCFA, or approximately 4,757,411 USD. In comparison, the annual budget of the Brazzaville University Hospital is five hundred million FCFA.
   
7. The ghost contractors are M2R-COMPANY M.C., KOUMOU CONSTRUCTION KC SARLU, BD. COM SARL, MAISON AUBAINE M.A S.A.R.L.U, Natalia Sarlu, Solution Juste Confort, Pierre Anne Construction, etc. In most cases, there is no public record of contracts, calls for tenders, or previous activities.
   
8. The pharmaceutical cartels: except Biocare Congo, which appears to be a subsidiary of NG Group, Claudia Sassou Nguesso’s company,  Biocare Congo, Laborex Congo, Ubipharm Congo, and Société Equatoriale Pharmaceutique are controlled by CFAO Healthcare. Ubipharm Congo is headed by Hyacinthe Ingani, a PCT deputy close to Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso. As a wholesaler, LABOREX CONGO and SEP are said to have participated in the destocking of contaminated blood in Congo in the 1980s.  In 1989, Congo, Laborex’s stronghold, was the African country most affected by HIV with 62.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants; a hidden contaminated blood scandal?

A plethora of supervision calls for tenders in direct agreement awarded to the husband of the Minister of Health, a pharmaceutical distributor under the boot of a son of the President, a decree that institutionalizes health apartheid, etc.  The entire health system of the Republic of Congo has come under the microscope.  It appears to be a portrait of health segregation, of a country with two health systems: one for the enrichment of the President and his followers and another entirely in ruins for the common Congolese.