While Republika Srpska is being shaken by “corona procurement” scandals, the latest of which is the suspicious purchase and sale of PCR tests, the University Clinical Center in Banja Luka is highlighting that the number of hospitalized due to coronavirus continue to grow at the current rate.
According to Deutsche Welle, which referred to data from distributors, the purchase price of PCR tests was less than half a dollar, while Republika Srpska paid 17 to 47 dollars, or 30 to 80 convertible marks. The Institute of Public Health partially denied the media allegations, stating that the public cannot expect answers to all questions before Monday.
Citizens paid from 105 to 150 BAM for commercial testing, and the Institute for Public Health of RS had a monopoly for all procurements, whose director Branislav Zeljković is in custody due to embezzlement with public procurements during the pandemic.
According to DW, the distributors claim that the institute’s tenders were rigged. From the beginning of the pandemic until today, ie in the last 18 months, 348 thousand PCR tests have entered the Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Srpska, through the purchase of tests and through donations., Federalna writes.
Most of it came through UNDP donations, which delivered 204,900 tests to the RS Institute of Public Health from April 2020 to August this year, instead of 179,000 as claimed by the Institute, so about 25,000 UNDP tests are missing.
The Institute told DW that the tests were procured through the companies Ako Med, Shimadzu, Spektrolab, Ceemed, Lab Unica, Erkona, Biomedica, and at the invitation of journalists, only two companies responded, denying their participation in the procurement.
From those two companies, whose names are not stated, they stated that the jobs were given to companies for which the tender conditions were set in advance. The text further states that the price of commercial PCR testing at the beginning of the pandemic was 200 marks, and that the price at which the Institute procured the tests at that time was around 30 marks.
The price of PCR testing in Republika Srpska was reduced to 140 marks at the end of last year, and currently amounts to 100 BAM.
“At the moment, the price of the tests delivered by the supplier is 4.5 marks. This means that this price includes customs and transport and a special storage regime,” the text reads.
Transparency International (TI) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has asked the Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices of BiH and entity health inspectorates to launch inspections of five suppliers who have been supplying medical oxygen to public health facilities in the previous period, as the TI said.
According to the statement, this association received an official confirmation from the Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices of BiH that five out of a total of six companies that have concluded contracts with public health institutions through public procurement in the past do not have a marketing authorization for medicines.
These are the companies: TGT TEHNOGAS, ISTRABENZ PLINI d.o.o Breza, KRAS d.o.o Laktasi, TEHNOGAS Kakmuz, and Milojevic Gilje Gas.
The mentioned companies have been supplying oxygen to numerous health care institutions in the past period without a license to trade in medicines. According to the data available to TI, among those institutions, there are the Clinical Center of Republika Srpska (RS), hospitals in Gradiska, Nevesinje, Sanski Most, Doboj, Zenica, Bijeljina, Trebinje, Prijedor, as well as many institutes and health centers.
TI pointed out this problem back in June this year when they asked the Agency to start an inspection of the company that supplied the hospital in Trebinje and was not in the public register.
It is important to mention that only on Thursday TI received an official letter from the Agency, which previously appeared in the media, that the inspection determined that the technical gas was used for medical purposes, which endangered the health of patients.
Therefore, it is especially worrying that the authorities ignored the warnings of the inspectors, and the reaction followed only after public pressure, but also the politicization of that whole case.
