If you or someone close to you have ever waited for chemotherapy at a hospital, only to find the medication unavailable, you know what that anguish feels like.
It isn't always due to lack of funding. In several cases, the problem in Latin America was—and continues to be—in public procurement. Between 2019 and 2025, Peru's Ministry of Health purchased 19 batches of cancer drugs with serious quality failures: bacteria, glass particles, and concentrations lower than those declared on the label.
More than 140,000 vials were destroyed. These were treatments that never reached patients when they were needed most. In at least one case, defective products were distributed to hospitals and administered before any alert was issued.
These medications came from five laboratories in India, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical exporters, which supplies more than 100 countries. Those companies still sell to the Peruvian state, and the system that allowed these purchases remains intact.
This reporting project is an investigative series by Salud con lupa and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The Pulitzer Center's support for this reporting was made possible through the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
