Seven billion items of pandemic PPE 'not fit for purpose'

Wasn't sure where (or if) to put this. But the level of waste (something which politicians love to hammer the NHS for) related to COVID is incomprehensible - if Government invested a fraction of the cost of this waste in research and care, thousands of lives would be improved.

"Nearly one in five units of PPE marked “do not supply” to the NHS by the Department of Health and Social Care:

Nearly one in five items of PPE the government bought during the pandemic are not fit for purpose and cannot be used by the NHS, it has been revealed – including 1.2 billion items that cannot be used at all.

As of December, almost 7 billion items of personal protective equipment bought for frontline services – 19.1% of the 36.4 billion items bought since February 2020 – had been marked “do not supply” to the NHS by the Department of Health and Social Care.

The number is more than three times the figure quoted last September, when health minister Lord Bethell admitted 1.9 billion items worth £2.8bn were in the “do not supply” category – 6.2% of the PPE bought up to that point.

DHSC has not placed a cash value on the latest figures. However, the department said in its annual report that it had written off £8.7bn worth of PPE in 2020-21 alone – including £673m spent on completely unusable items and £4.7bn lost to cost inflation."

my bold, more at link: Civil Service World

 

I am not sure I could comment on the UK government’s priority procurement mechanisms for PPE that considered ministerial recommendations before established providers of medical equipment and their subsequent decision to write off billions of pounds worth of faulty or non compliant equipment without seeking any redress from the suppliers without breaching at least two forum policies relating to politics and obscenity.

 

I know someone working in healthcare, whose institution received a large consignment of masks that had to be returned as unsuitable for use.

It was because they were attached by ear loops, and FFP3 masks used in their setting needed to have straps that go around the back of the head. Since there was nothing else wrong with them, she asked if they could be supplied to other places that didn't have the same strict rules, as they were still massively superior to most other types of mask (she was thinking of care homes or people working as carers, who at the time had practically nothing). She was advised that they had to go back into storage, and would probably end up being destroyed when they went out of date.

That's what really annoys me about this kind of thing. Nobody is allowed to do the sensible thing.