British doctors have warned that 250 ventilators the United Kingdom bought from China risk causing “significant patient harm, including death”.
China has been selling medical equipment to many governments which are still trying to curb the spread of the coronavirus that has made their healthcare systems collapse.
The doctors wrote a letter, that the UK Department of Health and Social Care emailed to the media. The letter said that the Shangrila 510 model made by Beijing Aeonmed Co. Ltd., one of China’s major ventilator manufacturers, had a problematic oxygen supply, could not be cleaned properly, had an unfamiliar design and a confusing instruction manual, and were built for use in ambulances, not hospitals.
“We believe that if used, significant patient harm, including death, is likely. We look forward to the withdrawal and replacement of these ventilators with devices better able to provide intensive care ventilation for our patients”, the letter reads.
The UK has the second-highest official Covid-19 death toll in Europe with 26,771 deaths.
When asked by reporters whether the company was aware of the concerns about its product, the international sales manager for Beijing Aeonmed said “I don’t know”, before hanging up the phone.
Last week, India has cancelled orders for about half a million coronavirus rapid testing kits from China after it found they had an accuracy rate of only 5%.
In March, Spain bought 640,000 rapid testing kits from China and returned the order, after the Spanish association of microbiologists warned that the kits performed with an accuracy level of under 30%.
The Netherlands has also returned around 600,000 masks out of a shipment of 1.3 million from China, after an inspection showed they failed to protect the face or had defective filters.
