‘Go local’ on PPE

Health caregivers—physicians, nurses, nurses’ aides, radiologists, lab personnel, cleaners, ambulance drivers, and others—continue to fall ill, possibly to die in dismaying numbers, though not as many as those in the early days of the pandemic.

A major reason cited for the fatalities was the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as their improper use, removal, and disposal. In view of the dismaying lack of such protective devices, frontliners were forced to reuse the gloves, gowns, masks, and shoe covers despite warnings from experts that these needed to be changed and discarded after one use, or at least after a few hours.

In response, the Department of Health (DOH) resorted to importing PPE, mainly from China. Private organizations, likewise alarmed by the growing toll among frontliners, began raising funds and sourcing PPE from manufacturers, again mostly from China. These were distributed among state facilities as well as private institutions.

Still, clearly the resort to and reliance on foreign PPE makers was not only expensive and difficult to pull off. It was also unreliable, as the Philippines had to compete with several other, wealthier, countries who could corner the market for PPE.

For this reason, government turned to the private sector, particularly garment makers who needed only to recalibrate their factories and retrain their workers to produce PPE that were not only cheaper and easily available, but would also pass even the most stringent standards for safety and efficacy.

Is it “happy ever after” then?

Unfortunately, no. The Confederation of Philippine Manufacturers of PPE (CPMP), formed in response to the government’s call for locally-made PPE, recently made known its sentiments, bemoaning what officers said was “the lack of demand coming from the government.”

CPMP president Lawrence de los Santos explained that “an immediate demand from the government helps us secure our capacity and our employment at least in the short- and medium-term.” Indeed, Health Undersecretary and spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire said that under the ratified version of the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Bayanihan 2, local manufacturers of PPE would get priority in the government’s procurement.

But the government continues to rely on imports, the manufacturers’ group lamented. “What is being supplied to the market?” asked De los Santos in a special report in this paper. “We, as local manufacturers, are forced by requirements to fulfill the necessary tests, the necessary certifications, the necessary inspections, to make sure we are providing a safe product, and we are sure we are providing that.”

“Now my question is this,” he added. “Is the product that is in the market, be it a coverall or a face mask, with some Chinese paper certification, safe? I don’t know. No one knows because no one has tested [the products].”

After responding to the pandemic, the group now feels it was the government that fell short, when the DOH—through the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management—continued to buy the majority of its PPE requirements abroad.

“That’s where we’re having issues,” said De los Santos.

Budget Undersecretary Lloyd Yao, who heads the Procurement Service, declined to comment, according to the report. “We prefer facts based on documents than grandiose, baseless statements,” he said in a Viber message.

Such a response, since the CPMP would not have gone public with its claims without any basis, reeks of arrogance and carelessness. Careless, because if the CPMP decides to withdraw entirely from the making and marketing of local PPE, it would imperil even more health frontliners as well as the public who depend on them for care and protection.

The CPMP has committed to continue providing Filipinos available, affordable, and effective equipment to protect themselves from the virus, but it certainly needs all the help it can get. The group said it could support the government’s PPE needs and readily invest another $36 million and add 4,000 workers to its existing 7,000 workforce to increase their productive capacity. The last point, in this season of joblessness, is yet another reason for the government to reconsider its purchasing decisions and “go local.”

Or as Sen. Francis Pangilinan, who has filed a bill calling for the greater use of local PPE, puts it succinctly: “Buy Filipino-made PPE and ensure the safety of health workers who currently use imported and substandard PPE. Buy Filipino-made PPE, and support the more than 7,000 workers of CPMP and the additional 4,000 who will gain employment from this.”

In other words, local PPE bring with them much social good and advantages for the Philippine economy and its people, so one wonders why some bureaucrats continue to insist on expensive, imported, and untested equipment.