Belgian diplomats are negotiating with the American authorities to prevent the destruction of contraceptive means worth 9.7 million dollars that are stored in Geel, the Federal Foreign Affairs Public Service said on Friday.
Millions of condoms and other contraceptives are waiting to be destroyed in a warehouse located in campine. The condoms were purchased by the USAID, theAmerican agency for development cooperationbut the Trump administration no longer wishes to distribute this stock.
To prevent their destruction, Foreign affairs have contacted the United States Embassy in Brussels. “As soon as we have been informed of the possible destruction of contraceptives in Geel, we have started diplomatic procedures,” explains Florinda Baleci, spokesperson for the Belgian Federal Administration.
It is about 26 million condoms, millions of boxes of oral contraceptives and hundreds of thousands of implantable contraceptives. The total value of these products is approximately $ 9.7 million (around 8.36 million euros). They would always be stored in a warehouse of the company Kuehne + Nagel in Geel. Another part of the stocks is kept in the United Arab Emirates.
A solution envisaged by Belgian diplomats is to temporarily store these contraceptives elsewhere than in this Geel deposit.
Many products are already close to their expiration date. For Belgian diplomats and other organizations concerned about this situation, it is a race against the clock to save the contraceptives before their destruction in France. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, they were to be cremated there before August 1. “We are currently not having any additional information to confirm whether the products have already been transferred to France,” said the spokesperson for Foreign Affairs. A large petition was launched in France on Wednesday to prevent their destruction. Other international humanitarian organizations are also trying to negotiate the transfer of productsbut without success so far.