COVID-19 has made India self-dependent on ventilator production: Health Secretary

Addressing a presser in New Delhi, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that COVID-19 pandemic has made India's self-dependent in the production of ventilators and the nation is now focusing to export indigenously built ventilators to foreign countries.

New Delhi: India's fight against COVID-19 pandemic in the last four months has made the nation self-dependent as far as the production of ventilators are concerned, said Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan in New Delhi on Tuesday.

"India is now going the export indigenously built ventilators to foreign countries," said Bhushan.

He said that Indian ventilators market in 2019 was 8510 units valued at Rs 444.74 crore with 75 per cent market share with imported equipments.

"Since March this year, ventilators demand spiked all over the world. There were limited domestic capacity and also the domestic manufacturers were dependent on imported components," Bhushan stated.

He said that the projected requirement of ventilators worked out based on the number of likely patients requiring ventilators and likely average stay of a COVID patient on ventilators.

"The projected requirements around 60,000. Accordingly, domestic manufacturers like Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited (BHEL) and Andhra Med-Tech Zone (AMTZ) played a key role," said Bhushan.

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He said that ventilators were physically demonstrated before the technical committee under DGHS.

"After successful clinical validation and based on the specific recommendations of DGHS, the ventilator was approved for supply," said Bhushan.

He said that competitively priced ranging between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 4 lakh per unit as compared to foreign ventilators ranging from 10 lakhs to 20 lakhs.

"More than 60,000 dilators have been ordered. Make in India share more than 96 per cent by volume and more than 90 per cent by value," he said.

Bhushan said that BHEL supplied 30,000 ventilators, AMTZ supplied 13,500 ventilators and automobile industry Maruti Suzuki supplied 10,000 ventilators.

"In less than 2 months more than 18,000 ventilators supplied to states and UTs and Central government hospitals as well as DRDO facilities," said Bhusan.

He said that apart from creating a dashboard for monitoring and installation of ventilators, 36 WhatsApp groups have also created to interact with the states and UTs.

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