Effects of shortages of ventilators

As the numbers of cases are rising day by day, there is an urgent demand of these ventilators to prevent the number of death.

The U.S., India and other countries are facing a critical shortage of life saving machines. According to a report, there is a need of 880,000 more ventilators to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. In the U.K., it was estimated that there were 5,000 adult ventilators and 900 children ventilators, and there was a need of atleast 30,000 more ventilators. In India, there are presently 40,000 ventilators and in the worst case scenario it needs around 40, 00,000 ventilators.

There is no way to plug this gap soon as there is a shortage of these ventilators due to the ban on aviation all over the world. The ventilator manufacturers had to import a lot of parts to make a ventilator which is becoming difficult in the challenging times. The governments of different countries are encouraging the local manufactures to fulfill the incredible demand but these manufacturers are far from reaching the goal.

IMPACT ON SUPPLY CHAIN

A large number of challenges are being faced by various companies due to the coming of the novel coronavirus, one such issue is the uncertainty surrounding the impact of COVID-19 on medical device industry supply chains.

The supply bottlenecks due to ban on the movement from one place to another is creating quite a negative impact on the Mechanical Ventilators Market. Moreover, due to lockdown there is also a shortage of laborers which makes the production of ventilators also a challenge.

Also, there is an acute shortage of the raw materials that are a prerequisite for setting up the mechanical ventilators due to which the prices have gone up twice or thrice of the original amount which again makes it very challenging to procure ventilators.

Much effort is urgently needed to reduce and minimize the gap between the requirement and the supply of ventilators. There are currently very few companies worldwide which have expertise in the production of ventilators. These companies' suppliers need support for maximizing the supply of the necessary raw materials to produce the equipment. In addition, efforts should be made to encourage the development of cost-effective ventilators in addition to more new industries.

STRATEGIC DECISIONS FOR MANUFACTURERS

As the dependency on China for the medical device is recognized as a threat to the national security, the central government of India has taken measures for in-house production of these materials.

To cope with current situation, the local manufacturers of ventilators are producing ventilators for very low costs. For instance, Dynamatic Technologies is making a USD 33 ventilator that does not need electricity to function, while AgVa is aiming to make 10,000 ventilators by mid-