In 2020 Sam Mraiche said he was able to ‘leverage contacts from his medical supply import business’ to help send 5 cargo planes full of donations to Beirut, Lebanon. Mraiche said one of his first calls was to Cargojet CEO Ajay Virmani. His next was to Health Partners International of Canada and Abbis Mahmoud of Operation Ramzieh.
On December 6, 2022, premier Danielle Smith and then health minister Jason Copping signed a deal with Turkish company Atabay Pharmaceutical for 5 million bottles of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen to supply to Alberta pharmacies at a cost of at least $80m.
Middle man, for unknown reasons, was Hassan Khalil Sam Mraiche. 5 million bottles is about 10 to 14 times the entire national demand for children’s pain and fever medications. Alberta committed to purchase $70m worth of meds at $14 a bottle, more than twice the retail price. The other $10m evaporated in ‘internal costs’.
Alberta received 1.5m bottles of the 5m purchased. Hassan Khalil Sam Mraiche was paid in full. Of that 1.5m, only a total of 4,700 bottles made it to community pharmacies for the public and 9,000 bottles made it into hospitals. As soon as the medicine arrived, there were concerns that the comparatively lower dosage concentration of the Turkish medicine increased the risk of dosage errors. Pharmacists had to keep the medicine behind the counter. The acetaminophen, known under the brand name Parol, was banned in hospitals.
The ibuprofen, known as Pedifen, was also pulled from shelves. The province sat on 1.4m bottles since the spring of 2023 after front-line health staff reported problems, including the medicine’s thicker consistency risked clogging feeding tubes and incorrect dosages for children.
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said Parol and Pedifen would be kept in reserve for future emergencies. Her bullshit was just that, the Pedifen was set to expire in November 2025 and the Parol two months after that.
Three years after Alberta’s government paid $70m for the Sam Mraiche boondoogle, the 30% actually received was given away. It was donated to Hassan Khalil Sam Mraiche’s favoured charity group Health Partners International of Canada.
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