As demand sputters, ventilator makers want export ban to go

Mumbai: Despite reports of ventilator shortages in the country, the manufacturers have called for a removal of the export ban citing unsold inventory and absence of new purchase orders from the government agencies.Domestic companies, which have ramped up capacities over the last four months, said supply of ventilators was not the issue. The shortages being faced by the healthcare system were on account of several factors that include lack of intensivists as well as a mismatch in the specifications of the machines and requirements of hospitals.According to the industry, there is spare capacity of 11,560 ventilators in the country, out of which 2,680 can be exported. “We request your kind intervention to open up exports... as manufacturers are stopping or slowing down production since last one month due to unsold inventory and falling demand and market prices as clients in public healthcare, ministry of health and HLL are not placing further orders,” said a letter written on Monday by Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED) to PD Vaghela, chairman of the central government’s Empowered Committee of Essential Medical Equipment. The central government under the PM CARES Fund has allocated Rs 2,000 crore for purchase of 50,000 ‘Made in India’ ventilators.Scarcity of ICU Specialists at HospitalsOut of these, 30,000 units have been manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited along with Mysuru-based Skanray and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Ten thousand units will be supplied by Noida-based AgVa Healthcare, while 9,650 are expected to be supplied by Andhra Pradesh-based AMTZ and order of 350 ventilators will be fulfilled by Allied Medical.Ventilator manufacturers say the government has decided not to procure more equipment. 76824956“By mid-August we would have supplied our order of 30,000 ventilators,” said Skanray managing director Vishwaprasad Alva. “We are just asking the government to allow us to export that equipment which they are not procuring or planning to procure,” Alva said. When asked about reports of lack of ventilators in several parts of India, Alva said there was shortage of intensivists and intensive care units (ICUs). Hospitals have ventilators but cannot use them for this reason. India’s capacity was 5,000 ventilators before Covid-19. Now the country has built a collective capacity of up to 100,000, he said. 76824962“The government can ask companies to set aside orders for domestic use and can allow the export of the remaining equipment,” said Darshan Bhatia of DVB Ventilators, a Hyderabad-based company. There have been reports of some hospitals in Mumbai not finding the specifications of the ventilators satisfactory. For instance, two state-run hospitals returned ventilators supplied by AgVa Healthcare because oxygen flow could not be controlled manually in these machines. Company’s founder Diwakar Vaish told ET last week that they were in the process of replacing these ventilators.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2CgwTFl