Stored and unwanted. These words can describe the current status of the Chinese respirators that the Federation of BiH(FBiH) paid for from the budget of more than five million euros, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Due to abuse of position in the procurement of a hundred respirators, the first-instance verdict of the Court of BiH in April convicted the President of the Federal Government, Fadil Novalic.
During the pandemic, Chinese respirators were allocated to about 15 hospitals in the territory of the FBiH.
In several health institutions contacted, they say that today they are either in storage, or that they have been returned to the supplier.
The verification, i.e. the license to use the respirator, expired more than a year ago. This means that, without its renewal, its use would be illegal.
To whom were they assigned and who uses the Chinese respirators?
One hundred Chinese respirators were purchased in April 2020, a day after the declaration of a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Most of them were awarded to the Clinical Center of the University of Sarajevo (KCUS), as the largest health institution in BiH. Respirators were installed in a special respiratory center that was created for patients with COVID-19.
Some hospitals claimed, however, that they never even accepted the assigned ventilators. These are the hospitals in Nova Bilaand Bihac, as well as the “Abdullah Nakas” General Hospital in Sarajevo and the University Hospital in Mostar.
The University Clinical Center in Tuzla, which received 25 devices, claims that they did not use the Chinese respirators and that they are in storage. One respirator was donated to the hospital in Livno, but in that institution they stress that “they never turned it on and used it”.
“As far as I know, almost no one used them in BiH, although I do not have reliable information. KCUS is another story. We know that they were installed and used there, and this was publicly stated by the management of the institution,” noted Ismet Suljevic, former head of the Clinic for Anesthesia and Resuscitation of the KCUS, Slobodna Evropa reorts.
