The Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed to ban the purchase of foreign ventilators for public hospitals. Vedomosti writes about this with reference to a draft government decree published on the portal of draft regulations.
The department wants to make these changes in the government decree "On establishing a ban on the admission of industrial goods originating from foreign countries." The Ministry of Industry and Trade claims that such a measure will help support Russian manufacturers of devices that are independently ready to "cover the needs of the healthcare system in full."
According to Tatyana Solomatina, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on health protection, domestic ventilators are no different in quality from foreign ones, but this will improve the quality of Russian products.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade listed companies producing ventilators: KRET, Triton Electronics, Radian, Khirana+, Medprom.
In May 2020, a fire broke out in one of the hospitals in St. Petersburg due to a short circuit in the Aventa-M ventilator manufactured by KRET. The fire killed six people. On May 9, a fire broke out in the Spasokukotsky hospital in Moscow. The building for the treatment of those infected with coronavirus caught fire. One person died. After that, it was reported that Roszdravnadzor checks the quality and safety of ventilators in hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the fires occurred.
In Russia, the use of Aventa-M devices was suspended after these cases. It also became known that the United States abandoned Russian ventilators after fires in Russian hospitals.