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The Ministry of Health (MoH) asked National Security authorities to investigate the Central Medical Stores inferno - which led to the loss of about GH₵230 million in medical supplies � because it suspected arson, it has been revealed. The Deputy Minister for Health, Dr Victor Bampoe, told Accra-based Joy FM Tuesday that the timing of the fire was suspicious. He said a day before fire, the Heath Minister, Dr Kweku Agyamang Mensah, had received a damning report about how certain medications were leaving the Central Medical Stores under suspicious circumstances. The drugs, Dr Bampoe said, were supposed to have been sent to certain health facilities in the country, but subsequent checks at the facilities revealed that the drugs never got there. He said the report also detailed how expired drugs worth millions of dollars were procured and put in the Central Medical Stores. Dr Bampoe said the Minister was acting on the report, when he heard the following day that there had been a fire at the facility. The Deputy Minister, however, refused to definitively state that arson was to blame for the fire, stressing that the investigation would make the cause of the fire clear. �So while we are not in a position to state that this was arson or it was an act of God, in consultation with others, he [the Minister] felt that we should ask the National Security authorities to come in and investigate and see how this really happened - whether it�s a coincidence or an act of God or whatever,� he said. As part of the investigation, Dr Bampoe said officials of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) had been interdicted and asked to step aside. According to him, the decision - which he said did not mean that the officials were guilty - was necessary to �create an enabling environment for the investigation�. �There is a little bit of a suspicion but they are being asked to step aside without prejudice to their involvement or purported involvement or whatever. It is just to allow the investigation to go on. So nobody is saying anybody has done something wrong at this time. It�s just that we need an enabling environment to be able to look into things properly,� Dr Bampoe emphasised. Commenting on the magnitude of the loss, the Deputy Minister described it as �a tragedy of monumental proportions� which has �set us back many many years.� �Drugs for malaria, for tuberculosis, for HIV have been destroyed in the fire, so it will take us a while to get back up to speed..� he added. The GHS� Central Medical Stores, which is located in Tema in the Greater Accra region, was the biggest drug storage and distribution outlet in Ghana. The Ministry of Health has revealed that the facility was not insured prior to the devastating fire.