For months, the Belgian authorities have been trying to come up with a plan to rescue $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that were stranded in a warehouse outside Antwerp when the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year.
Those efforts are ongoing — but it became clearer this week that damage had already been done to supplies stored in another warehouse.
The authorities in the Flanders region confirmed in written responses to lawmaker questions that, in addition to four truckloads’ worth of contraception in Geel, Belgium, outside Antwerp, there were 20 truckloads of abandoned products — which appear to also include contraception — sitting about 35 miles to the west in a warehouse in Kallo, Belgium.
Those 20 truckloads have been stored incorrectly, the Flemish authorities said. While medical devices in the supply, including syringes, could still be used, the medicines can no longer be sold or donated.
The medications “cannot be put back into circulation,” Jo Brouns, the Flemish minister responsible for the issue, wrote in the responses, which were posted online this week.
Just how much contraception has gone bad is not clear, because what exactly sits in that Kallo warehouse is a mystery.
It has been widely reported since the summer that the U.S. government has been sitting on $9.7 million worth of U.S.A.I.D. contraception in Belgium, especially after the government made plans to incinerate that still-usable birth control, which was destined for clinics in the poorest countries in Africa. Belgian and Flemish authorities have been trying to prevent the destruction. But it is not clear whether the 20 truckloads in Kallo are part of that load — or in addition to it.
The Flemish government has not provided a clear accounting of what exactly is in each warehouse. Tom Demeyer, a spokesman for the local authorities, said that it was not up to them to disclose the contents of someone else’s property.
Still, outside groups say they think that the products in Kallo probably come on top of the $9.7 million worth that were already believed to be in Geel.
That’s because detailed inventory lists were shared with nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations that tried and failed to buy the birth control stuck in Belgium. The products on those spreadsheets — IUDs, contraceptive pills and implants — tally up to about $10 million and would fill about four trucks, said Marcel van Valen, the head of supply chain at International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Given that, Mr. van Valen and others, including Sara Salarkiya, an international policy officer at the sexual health nonprofit Sensoa, think that the four truckloads in Geel are the ones that have been widely discussed in recent months. And if that is the case, it is not obvious how much of the stash in Kallo is contraception, what kind of contraception it might be or how much it is worth.
“We don’t know exactly what the products are or what their value is,” Mr. van Valen said of the inventory in Kallo.
A spokeswoman for U.S.A.I.D. did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Demeyer, the spokesman in Flanders, did confirm that the Kallo warehouse contained at least some IUDs and syringes. He also said that the Flemish authorities were not sure when the products had arrived in Kallo.
The Flemish authorities went to check on the contraceptives in Geel after reports that the U.S. government might have destroyed them. While the supply remained intact, they learned at that point that 20 of the 24 truckloads of products that had once been in the Geel warehouse were by then in Kallo.
But the authorities would not clarify whether those 20 truckloads had been part of the initial $9.7 million accounting or had been moved before that tally.
Now, the longer the still-usable products wait in the warehouses, the greater the risk that more and more of them will become obsolete.
Inventory lists provided to multiple nonprofit and nongovernmental groups that have tried to buy the contraception show that most of the stash in Geel has years left before it expires — but some of it is getting close enough to expiration that donating it to the intended recipients may become difficult.
In Tanzania, for instance, many products can’t be imported if less than 60 percent of the total shelf life remains, Mr. van Valen said.
The question is whether Belgium will be able to broker a deal between the United States and some outside group to allow for the donation or sale of the products.
Stephanie Nolen and Koba Ryckewaert contributed reporting.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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