Several states are grappling with the shortage of ventilators as India faces a huge surge of COVID-19 cases mainly due to a slump in local manufacturing and short supply of ventilators after the initial push from the central government last year.
With hospitals not willing to take ‘Made in India’ ventilators, the government curtailed the requirement it had originally envisaged in 2020, and manufacturers, too, stopped production, according to reports.
The central government had stepped in last year to order bulk supplies of ventilators when the COVID-19 first hit the country posing a serious challenge to the country’s medical preparedness.
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Orders had been placed for getting 50,000 critical care ventilators (CCV), according to a press note dated April 9, 2020, by the ministry of health and family welfare.
The government had allocated Rs 2,000 crore last June for ‘Made in India’ ventilators to be supplied to government-run COVID-19 hospitals across the country, according to reports.
However, the Centre could procure only 35,179 ventilators out of the 50,000 originally ordered. While 30,000 ventilators were being manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), the balance 20,000 were to be made by AgVa Healthcare (10,000), AMTZ Basic (5,650), AMTZ High End (4,000) and Allied Medical (350), reports suggested.
AgVa Healthcare in collaboration with Maruti Suzuki produced 10,000 CCVs, but the government picked up only half the order, forcing AgVa-Maruti to stop production in June last year.
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Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava said the government was yet to procure those CCVs that were ordered from the industry in general, according to a recent CNBC-TV18 report.
However, multiple hospitals had flagged concerns about the quality of AgVa’s ventilators, according to sources. Last year, a government panel had said AgVa’s COVID model ventilators ‘should not be considered as a replacement for high-end ventilators in tertiary care ICUs’, reports mentioned.
Nalin Shinghal, chairman and managing director, BHEL, said the firm has "not manufactured any ventilator"; and it does "not have the manufacturing capacity for it".
Similarly, the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) said it was still exploring the possibility of collaborating with established ventilator manufacturers, according to reports.
Indian Railways also tried to get into manufacturing ventilators, and in April 2020, it developed a low-cost ventilator called Jeevan at its Kapurthala Rail Coach Factory (RCF).
The ventilator was to cost Rs. 10,000 without the compressor and the RCF had the capacity to make 100 such ventilators per day. But the project could not see the light of the day due to the unavailability of parts, the report mentioned.
