Health minister Esperance Luvindao’s brother allegedly contacted the health ministry to enquire about the ministry’s pharmaceutical needs.
The Issue has learnt that Jonathan Luvindao, a pharmacist, last month emailed the ministry of health as the managing director of Atlantic Pharmaceutical. The Issue’s preliminary investigations show that Atlantic Pharmaceuticals was at some point owned by Ebba Uupindi, who is Jonathan Luvindao’s wife.
The email was requesting the ministry’s medicine purchasing plans.
Even though Atlantic Pharmaceuticals allegedly never did business with the ministry before, The Issue, however, understands that the entity has been listed as a vendor at the Central Medical Stores for over two years. This means the company has always had an intention to do business with the government long before Esperance Luvindao entered the political realm.
Two ministry officials told The Issue that the minister and Jonathan Luvindao of Atlantic Pharmaceutical are siblings.
Both minister Luvindao and Jonathan Luvindao did not respond to questions sent to them this week.
However, the email was not well received in some quarters in the ministry, which has been making headlines for the wrong reasons.
At least two ministry officials said they are aware of the said email and expressed concerns about what its implications could be.
Some ministry officials saw Jonathan Luvindao’s email to the ministry as a power play aimed at intimidating officials into giving his company medical supplies contracts in exchange for goodwill with the minister.
The email comes at a time when minister Luvindao is allegedly sitting on a proposal to cut out local medicine suppliers and buy directly from manufacturers abroad.
Ministry insiders said that local suppliers are responsible for the critical medicines shortage in government health facilities.
Some of whom are said to have been delivering as late as six months after the due date, without consequence.
The new proposed system is expected to shore up the ministry’s stock levels and save it money as middlemen posing as local suppliers will be cut out.
However, with the surfacing of Luvindao’s brother as a potential local supplier, questions are now being asked whether the minister will support the ministry’s proposed move to start buying directly from manufacturers.
The move to buy directly from manufacturers was announced by former health minister Kalumbi Shangula in June 2019. But the move was never implemented.
The health minister seems to have hurdled initial public concerns around her suitability for the position, considering her relative inexperience as a health professional and the questions around the numbers presented after she won an award.
