What saved the TB project was an unrelated decision by the Government to “deregister” these companies because they had provided substandard drugs. Though they were the lowest bids for contracts worth millions of dollars, this debarring prevented the schemes from fully manifesting. If they had not, the two companies would have won 70-80 per cent of the bids between 2001 and 2004 worth $16 million.
Since the registry for “debarred” companies was not publicly available, the companies continued to get “No objection” certificates from the World Bank and kept bidding for drugs it had been deregistered for — Pyrazinamide for TB is one example.
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