India could face severe shortage of ventilators in battle against coronavirus

Updated : March 23, 2020 04:27 PM IST

Bengaluru-based medical devices manufacturer Skanray Technologies have been asked to ramp up production of ventilators

Karnataka has placed an order for 1,000 ventilators and 5 lakh pieces of protective gear with the company

As India begins a protracted battle against coronavirus, ventilators are emerging as one of the key medical devices that need to be used to treat severe cases of COVID-19. This testing time has highlighted the severe shortage of the respiratory device in India. Overall, India imports around 80-85 percent of all medical devices for intensive care, including ventilators and high-end diagnostic and robotic surgery instruments.

Sources within the medical devices industry have said that there are around 1 lakh ventilators in the country. According to medical experts, India needs around 2.1 ventilators per 10,000 patients to battle the COVID-19 crisis alone. A few large private hospitals have 80 to 100 ventilators in one city, but have stated that they were being used on existing critical care patients.

The number of ventilators available in various cities and states vary. For example, reports suggest that Mumbai alone has 800 to 1,000 ventilators, while states such as Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh have 1,500 and 1800, respectively.

The city of Bengaluru, according to the head of a top hospital chain, has approximately 400 ventilators, whereas the requirement is around 1,000. Experts now fear that there could be a severe shortage of ventilators in rural areas as most ICU beds are concentrated in urban areas. Hence, there is a pressing need to prevent COVID-19 from entering rural areas.

At present, ventilators are mainly imported, assembled in India or partially produced here. Experts suggest that India does not have a single indigenously manufactured ventilator as the companies that produce ventilators import some or many of their components.

Now, experts state that there is a shortage of around 70,000 ventilators in India and the short term supply requirement would be to procure around 4,000-5,000 ventilators per month.

Although demand from the government machinery has gone up, the industry is not equipped to meet the requirement. One of the key issues here is that the global supply of ventilators and spares have depleted. Each country is trying to conserve or build their own resources to meet the demand for ventilators. For example, India has banned the export of ventilators, while Germany is looking to ramp up supplies, as the latter looks to increase the number of ICU beds to 22,000 beds per 1 lakh units from the current 12,000. China is one of the few countries that is looking to supply components for ventilators to India, but logistics could be an issue due to the travel restrictions, industry sources said.

Homegrown companies like Bengaluru-based medical devices manufacturer Skanray Technologies have been asked to ramp up production. As per sources, the government of Karnataka has ordered for 1,000 ventilators and 5 lakh pieces of protective gear from the company.

While this is an opportunity for the company, Skanray could face supply chain issues as components for the final product are imported. Sources close to the company has said that there could be a possibility of Skanray manufacturing an improvised version of ventilators.

Although there is a real shortage of ventilators, the situation has sprung in some interesting developments. While Gujarat-based stent manufacturer SMT is looking at 3D manufacturing of ventilators, Mahindra Group is believed to be working on manufacturing ventilators at their factories.

India could face severe shortage of ventilators in battle against coronavirus

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