Donated respirators from the United Arab Emirates are not usable for treating coronavirus. This is the result of months of waiting for the distribution of donations from this country. Twenty-three tons of humanitarian aid at Sarajevo airport waited almost 4 months without valid documentation. Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina justifies the wait due to the slow collection of documents for distribution.
The story of 40 respirators, which arrived in the form of a donation from the United Arab Emirates, has been problematic on several occasions, because it was connected with the same ones from the ”Respirators Affair” led by the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The donation was finally distributed to health care institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but is it usable?
The first answer was given from Abdulah Nakas General Hospital, after a respirator examination. Answer – respirators are not usable for treatment. “They don’t have all the accessories, they don’t have all the accessories so in fact for SARS and COVID they can’t be used without those accessories and they have one drawback that they don’t have service. So, someone should connect it to us and do a zero service, and there is no service “, claims doctor Ednan Drljevic.
Otherwise, as they said from the hospitals in Tuzla and Zenica, protective equipment is always welcome, but it will be enough for a maximum of a month, so they are forced at least when it comes to the Tuzla Clinical Center to go into public procurement themselves.
It is interesting that out of 10 cantons, only the Bosnian-Podrinje Canton did not receive a single respirator.
“We have three respirators that I still don’t really know what kind of respirator it is. According to the first information, and I really can’t claim that at the moment, it is the same type of respirator that was procured by the Government of the Federation of BiH “, said Rasim Skomorac, director of the Cantonal Hospital in Zenica.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina justifies its inaction by incorrectly collected documentation and procedures. And the Institute for Public Health of the Republika of Srpska received the donation with a reservation.
“It is currently in the warehouse of commodity reserves after certain inventories, checking the condition of the goods, because precisely because of the standing, we need to see what condition they are in,” said Branislav Zeljkovic, director of the RS Institute of Public Health.
And so waiting four months for much-needed equipment to fight the coronavirus, we got again, it seems, something we won’t be able to use. To whom should we attribute responsibility or irresponsibility for such omissions, procedures or incompetence of the authorities?, BHRT reports.