The Ministry of Industry and Trade proposes to ban government purchases of imported ventilators

The Ministry of Industry and Trade is preparing a ban on public procurement of ventilators manufactured by foreign companies – the department has published a draft government decree on this. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the potential volume of production of such equipment at the facilities of Russian manufacturers is several times greater than the market needs. At the same time, according to experts, among the Russian medical equipment there are no models necessary, for example, for the treatment of infants and adult patients with complications.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has prepared amendments to a number of regulations that will allow the department to prohibit state hospitals and clinics from purchasing imported ventilators. The draft government decree is posted on regulation.gov.ru. If the department’s initiative is approved, then this type of foreign medical equipment will become the first object of a strict ban for the needs of medical public procurement.

The first restrictions on public procurement of medical devices of imported origin began back in 2015 – then the Ministry of Industry and Trade introduced the “third extra” rule, according to which the authorities closed access to state tenders for foreign manufacturers if there were two competitors from the EAEU countries. Even taking into account the replacement of this rule with the “second extra” rule in a few years and the introduction of a minimum share of purchases of domestic products in 2020, state customers did not completely lose access to imported medical equipment. She, in turn, continued to be in demand – so much so that individual hospitals were ready to enter into lease agreements for its supply in order to circumvent legal requirements (for more details, see Kommersant dated September 4, 2015). The situation was similar in the field of pharmaceuticals – although the Ministry of Industry and Trade gradually tightened the requirements for suppliers in order to achieve localization of production in the Russian Federation, there was no talk of a complete ban on the supply of any of the drugs or their types. In other industries, import bans on various types of products were introduced a few years ago – primarily in the field of electronics (for more details, see Kommersant of June 10, 2020).

There may be several reasons why the Ministry of Industry and Trade decided to test this approach in relation to medical equipment. As the department itself points out, now there are already a sufficient number of domestic manufacturers on the Russian market – the largest of them are KRET, Triton-Electronics and a number of enterprises of the state corporation Rostec. In total, according to the agency, they are ready to produce up to 36,000 ventilators per year, while public hospitals and clinics, on average, buy only 2,700 units of such medical equipment per year. However, as Konstantin Zotov, CEO of Medical Systems and Technologies, notes, even if Russian companies can mass-produce ventilators, this does not mean that they have all the models needed for patients in stock. “In the Russian Federation, over the past few years, they have learned how to make several versions of ventilators that are quite suitable for use in standard situations. However, in a number of cases – primarily when it comes to the treatment of premature babies and adult patients with complications – the capabilities of Russian devices will definitely not be enough, ”he says.

However, even if the Ministry of Industry and Trade prohibits government purchases of imported ventilators in the near future, Russian healthcare has some kind of “margin of safety” due to the massive purchases of this medical equipment during the coronavirus pandemic. Then, several tens of thousands of units of such medical equipment were purchased throughout the country for the equipment of intensive care units – in 2020, as Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova explained at the time, more than 40 thousand devices were used in the Russian Federation. As Konstantin Zotov notes, some of them, as the number of cases of coronavirus decreased and covid departments were closed, were mothballed and sent to warehouses – and, apparently, they will be able to replace those that fail for several years if necessary. “Finally, as we see from the situation with the withdrawal of a number of pharmaceutical manufacturers from the Russian Federation due to the small market capacity, in a situation of extreme need, the Russian government is ready to take emergency measures and allow the import of necessary medicines here directly from abroad, bypassing all registration procedures. The same logic will work in the case of ventilators. True, usually for the onset of extreme need, either public indignation or the death of several patients is necessary, ”a Kommersant source in one of the state clinics notes.

Anastasia Manuylova