American foreign aid has long been criticized for the difficulty of tracking where the money goes, and this week a federal watchdog showed what that accountability looks like in practice. An operation in Kenya shut down pharmacies selling stolen, expired and counterfeit medicine, some of it diverted from U.S.-funded global health programs. The case offers both a warning about how aid can be siphoned off and a model for how to stop it.

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From Just the News:

The United States Agency for International Development, Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG) has once again stopped the theft of U.S.-funded medical items.

The USAID OIG led a field operation in Kenya to find stolen medical products within the country’s commercial pharmaceutical supply chain, the agency said in a press release on September 8, 2026. The operation led to two arrests, 11 individuals compelled to report for further investigative or court proceedings, and the closure of at least four pharmacies over illegal schemes and violations of regulations.

In that interview, Schofield recounted another incident in Africa involving malaria and AIDS medication. He said that “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commodities” were being shipped every year from the U.S. to Africa, and organized groups began stealing the products.

The Kenya operation seized thousands of medical products, including more than 2,000 tablets of co-trimoxazole antibiotics and hundreds of expired, defective or stolen tablets, capsules and diagnostic test strips. Investigators also suspect that some of the stolen items were diverted from U.S.-funded foreign assistance and global health programs, including programs under the United Nations, and that some were intended for shipment to other countries. The agency described the effort as a field operation rather than a desk review, with investigators working inside Kenya’s commercial pharmaceutical supply chain to trace where stolen goods resurface.

Former USAID Inspector General Jonathan Schofield discussed the work last week on Just the News, No Noise, praising the office’s investigators for leaving the embassy to conduct field visits, interviews and investigations. He described a previous case involving malaria and AIDS medication in which organized groups stole products shipped annually from the United States to Africa. Those criminals, he said, ignored refrigeration requirements and expiration dates and did not instruct buyers how to administer the medicine, meaning patients could fall ill or die. In that earlier operation, investigators traced the stolen products, worked with local law enforcement to arrest sellers and identify suppliers, and ultimately secured arrests of dozens of people across Africa along with indictments in the United States. Schofield said the office then worked with African administrators on changes that made theft harder.

Scripture speaks plainly about the weight of caring for the vulnerable, and medicine that never reaches a patient is not merely a budget line that failed. It is a neighbor deprived of treatment, and in the case of antibiotics and antiretroviral drugs, it is also a risk to public health when counterfeit or expired doses circulate. Christians should care about stewardship of tax dollars and about the integrity of aid programs, not because every dollar must show a return, but because waste and theft target the very people aid is meant to help. There is also a lesson here about accountability. Government agencies earn trust by proving they can police their own programs, and the USAID inspector general’s field work demonstrates what that looks like when it is done well.

Let us pray for the investigators working to stop the theft of life-saving medicine, for the patients put at risk by counterfeit drugs, and for integrity in how our nation’s aid is delivered.

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(Excerpt from Just the News. Photo Credit: pamelasphotopoetry from Getty Images / Canva).