A pharmacist who stole medication to send to Africa has been allowed to retain his license despite a one-year suspension for his actions.
Long Eaton: So, there’s this pharmacist named Sylvester Vinkabb who got into some serious trouble. He was caught stealing medication to send back home to Sierra Leone. Crazy, right?
He ended up with a one-year suspension after a tribunal found out he ordered thousands of pills from the pharmacy where he worked. We’re talking over 16,000 diazepam and Xanax tablets, plus a ton of codeine.
Vinkabb claimed he was just trying to help people, even though he admitted to sending the meds home. The General Pharmaceutical Council found him guilty of six charges and decided he should be suspended.
Between May 2022 and February 2023, he took around 330 boxes of pills from Evans Pharmacy. He even took other stuff like phenergan elixir, all without permission. He paid for it, but still, that’s a big no-no.
He got caught when someone noticed discrepancies in the pharmacy’s records. Vinkabb said he’d been sending medicine back to Sierra Leone since 2022, taking stuff from patient return bins. He called it the “Africa box.”
He explained that he’d take unused meds and put them aside for shipping. He even bought barrels to send everything, including clothes, to his mom’s house for distribution. He insisted he was just trying to help, not make a profit.
Despite his good intentions, the panel found he was clearly aware he was stealing. Other staff knew about the “Africa box” but didn’t know where it was going. Vinkabb apologized but admitted he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t put patients at risk.
In the end, the panel said he didn’t do it for money but to help his community. They believed he wouldn’t do it again, but they still called it a serious breach of standards.
