Buy and immobilize

Roszdrav counted the number of idle medical equipment

Allmedical equipment that was supposed to be delivered to the Russian regions as part of the national project “Health” and installed in medical institutions (health care facilities) in the summer will be in place by the end of the year . Due to the large number and heterogeneity of regions, the picture is still quite mixed: in some, the equipment has long been received and appropriate premises have been allocated for it; in others, they have just begun to paint the walls, while boxes with equipment, the cost of which sometimes amounts to millions of dollars, remain open air. Thus, according to the Federal Agency for Health and Social Development (Rozdrav), for various reasons, 3,151 pieces of equipment are idle in Russian clinics and hospitals today.

Yesterday, during a conference call at the Ministry of Health and Social Development, the heads of regional health authorities and deputy governors reported to Deputy Minister Vladimir Starodubov about the supply of equipment. Despite the above statistics of “downtime,” officials showed complete calm and optimism. By and large, the technical re-equipment of rural clinics and county hospitals is indeed proceeding within the planned framework. Deputy head of Roszdrav Ruslan Khasanov recalled that within two years it was planned to supply 42,895 units of diagnostic equipment worth about 30 billion rubles to 11 thousand clinics. In 2007, about 20 thousand units of such equipment were purchased for a total amount of more than 15 billion rubles. By the beginning of yesterday's meeting, healthcare facilities had already signed for 84% of this equipment.

Traditionally, much attention is paid to medical transport at meetings on technical equipment. Three competitions were held for the purchase of ambulances in 2007, resulting in the purchase of 6,429 vehicles, including 277 ambulances and 19 ambulances based on tracked snow and swamp-going vehicles for remote and northern areas. In total, for a total amount of about 4 billion rubles. About 68% of these vehicles have already been sent to the regions.

New this year was the purchase of a significant number of fetal monitors for early detection of pathology in the fetus and newborns and conducting screening studies. Based on the results of the competitions, seven government contracts were concluded for the supply of medical equipment for neonatal diagnostics in the amount of about 175 million rubles. and five government contracts for the supply of test systems for the specified equipment in the amount of about 225 million rubles. However, the active use of funds allocated from the federal budget did not particularly surprise anyone. A Vremya Novostei source who was present at the meeting claims that the leaders of the Ministry of Health and Social Development were pleasantly surprised by another fact - the constituent entities of the federation allocated funds for the consumables necessary for the operation of the new equipment. The lack of consumables was one of the main reasons for the downtime of expensive diagnostic equipment in 2006-2007.

Galina PAPERNAYA