**PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY SOLD STOLEN, EXPIRED INSULIN TO MALAWI'S HOSPITALS FOR YEARS — AND STILL OPERATES TODAY**

A pharmaceutical company in Malawi bought stolen insulin that had already expired, slapped new labels on it with fake expiry dates, and sold it to five of the country's biggest public hospitals — including the same hospital it was stolen from. A three-month investigation by the Platform for Investigative Journalism found that GPSL Wholesale Ltd distributed roughly 4,000 vials of relabeled, expired insulin to Mzuzu Central Hospital, Kamuzu Central Hospital, Zomba Central Hospital, and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre between January and March 2022, during a critical national insulin shortage. Clinicians noticed the drugs were not working on diabetic patients. An intern at Kamuzu Central caught the scheme when fake labels started peeling off refrigerated vials, revealing the original August 2021 expiry dates underneath. The company had changed the batch numbers and printed October 2022 as the new expiry. Despite all of this, GPSL continues to supply medicines to state hospitals today.

This was not GPSL's first offense. Documents confirm that GPSL Wholesale is the same company that previously operated as Galaxy Pharmaceuticals and Surgical Logistics — a firm the Pharmacy and Medicines Regulatory Authority shut down in 2013 after it supplied faulty antibiotics to Mzimba District Hospital. Doctors at that hospital reported five or six babies dying after their mothers were treated with a chloramphenicol antibiotic Galaxy supplied. Before regulators could fully test the drugs, Galaxy pulled all stock from the hospital and issued a recall. Those batches vanished before they could be examined. The evidence was gone and the victims were buried. The PMRA revoked Galaxy's license and the company officially closed. Six years later, in 2019, it reopened under the name GPSL Wholesale Ltd — and the same regulatory authority that shut it down approved its new application to operate.

The mechanics of the insulin scheme show how deep the rot goes. A pharmacy technician at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Michael Lemeka, spent weeks smuggling expired insulin vials out of the hospital in his laptop bag during lunch breaks. The expired stock was supposed to be destroyed but was stored in a ward with a broken lock and no guard. Lemeka connected with Habib Goba, a known illicit pharmaceutical dealer whose family had prior arrests for trafficking stolen public medicines. GPSL purchased the stolen insulin at roughly K5,000 per ampoule — well below the K7,500 market rate from authorized distributors — and entered it into company books as if it were legitimately sourced from multiple suppliers. Under Malawian law, the brand of insulin in question had only one authorized distributor in the country, Intermed Pharmaceutical. None of the companies GPSL listed as suppliers were authorized to sell insulin.

When the PMRA investigated, its own disciplinary committee recommended revoking GPSL's license and making the findings public. The PMRA board rejected that recommendation. Instead, it issued a warning to managing director Tarang Makhetcha and advised the company to tighten its internal controls. The Lilongwe office was closed, but the main Blantyre headquarters — where investigators also found expired insulin during the raid — stayed open. Two company pharmacists got six-month suspensions. The hospital pharmacy head who failed to secure the storage room was suspended. The technician who stole the insulin faces criminal charges, but the case has stalled in court, partly because key suspects — including Goba — have since died. No forensic review was ever conducted. No public notice of the findings was ever issued, despite a PMRA board resolution requiring one. The Diabetes Association of Malawi told investigators it was completely unaware the scandal had even happened.

Allegations of political interference and attempted bribery hang over the entire process. Sources told PIJ that senior government officials and politicians from the then-ruling Malawi Congress Party pressured the PMRA during its investigation. One source said the PMRA board chairperson turned down a 60 million kwacha offer to drop the case. Whether other committee members were approached is unknown, but the final decision — a warning instead of a license revocation — speaks for itself. Meanwhile, the case file from the 2013 infant deaths investigation was stolen from PMRA offices. Records related to those deaths were denied under an Access to Information Act request, and PIJ confirmed the denial was because the file no longer exists. Critical evidence about what killed those babies in Mzimba is gone permanently.

This is a pattern that repeats across Africa and the Global South: when pharmaceutical regulation is weak, it is Black and poor communities that absorb the consequences. A 2022 study by Kamuzu University of Health Sciences found that more than 14 percent of antibiotics, antimalarials, and antidiabetic drugs circulating in Malawi were substandard or falsified. That is not a glitch in the system — it is the system working exactly as it does when profit is prioritized over Black lives and regulators are either underfunded, compromised, or both. The people in those hospital beds — like 18-year-old Mike Mackson, a diabetic patient at Kamuzu Central who has been in and out of the hospital since 2020 and whose body bears the visible toll — do not have the luxury of waiting for courts and ministries to act.

The Ministry of Health told PIJ it is waiting for the courts to conclude the matter before deciding on further action. GPSL refused to respond to questions. When PIJ journalists visited GPSL's Blantyre office unannounced earlier this year, a government ambulance was parked at the loading dock, collecting medical supplies. The company that was caught selling deadly antibiotics, shut down, reopened under a new name, caught again selling stolen and expired insulin, and given a warning — is still in business, still filling orders, still supplying the hospitals where Malawi's poorest and sickest go for help.