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In April, following instructions from the Minister of Health, Aurelijus Veryga, nearly half a thousand monitors were distributed to medical institutions to monitor the vital signs of COVID-19 patients.
But, according to the newspaper, some health institutions did not even manage to unpack the equipment received during the quarantine; In September, the collection of those monitors began and returned to warehouses.
It turned out that equipment purchased from unclear suppliers in China at the end of March was not suitable for use. In addition, according to sources at Lietuvos Rytas, the devices could not even be imported into Lithuania because they do not have the necessary certificates.
The representatives of the hospitals interviewed told Lietuvos Rytas that there were no instructions or training on how to work with them, and that the devices received were not certified and were defective.
The confusing purchase of medical institutions was organized by the Health Emergencies Center of the Ministry of Health, which was headed a year ago by Olegas Sitnikovas, former head of security at the Kaunas Clinics of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences.
This institution has yet to provide Lietuvos Rytas with any explanation as to why urgently purchased and even unpacked monitors are already returning to service warehouses and who will be responsible for a possible misplaced purchase.
According to information provided by the Central Procurement Portal (CVPP), the monitors were not purchased directly from official representatives of Lithuanian medical equipment giant General Electric Tradintec, but from other suppliers in China.
In one case, a contract for the purchase of 192 monitors, when the total value of the purchase amounted to 854 thousand. It was signed with the Chinese company Hongzhou Sunschine. On the same day, March 28, another monitor purchase transaction was concluded with this Chinese company: another million was paid to suppliers for 191 devices. 19 thousand US DOLLAR. In both cases, the assets were acquired through unannounced negotiations. This exemption under the Public Procurement Law also applied to the purchase of 114 vital signs monitors from a supplier in Israel. MyCity360 Innovation Ltd, the Center for Health Emergencies, paid 104 thousand for them. euros.
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