Quality concerns raised over locally-made ventilators: Report

Centre's Make-in-India push for medical equipment is facing bumps as serious concerns have been raised regarding the quality of locally-made ventilators, according to a report by Business Standard.

JJ Hospitals and St George Hospital in Mumbai have returned close to 100 ventilators for failing to raise the oxygen levels to the required amount for critical Covid-19 patients, according to the report. The hospitals noted that the ventilators, priced at 1.5 lakhs as compared to the Rs 10 to 15 lakh for imported ones, were found to be better suited for ambulances, homes and chronic patients and not for the service of Covid-19 critical patients.

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The ventilators were made by a startup called AgVa, which is supported by Maruti Suzuki in vendor development and component sourcing. The startup, which used to make a few hundred machines in a month, has now scaled up the production to almost 10,000 a month.

Dr Shuchin Bajaj, founder and director of Ujala Cygnus Healthcare said that the company had made a good start. “The best is the enemy of the good as we always say. The good thing is its very low cost and how it works on a very simple platform. For organisations like ours which are focusing on low-cost solutions in small towns, it is good,” he said.

Dr Bajaj noted that AgVa ventilators are ideal for home use. “It costs one-tenth of a similar ventilator. Of course, it does not have all those bells and whistles but it's not an iPhone. It’s definitely an Oppo and there is plenty you can do with it,” he commented.

As the ventilator shortage peaked in March after Covid-19 cases began to surge, locally-made ventilators were predicted to be the success of the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative. The government allotted Rs 2,000 crore from the PM CARES fund and the production of ventilators jumped from 300 units in March to 30,000 units now.

Vishwaprasad Alva of Skanray Technologies said that before Covid-19, only 1,000 locally-manufactured ventilators were used while the rest of the 9,000 were imported. His company has been selling ventilators in Europe and he hasn’t received a single complaint. According to him, hospitals that have made allegations are “mixing up issues.”

In the meantime, change in the medical treatment of patients and virus’ behaviour have shown that fewer patients need ventilators, prompting the government to procure lesser ventilators. Fortis Healthcare, a tertiary care hospital, has 662 Covid-19 patients of which only 26 are on ventilators.