What is happening? What exactly is the problem?Several health professionals I spoke to said while it was very creditable that India had managed to shed its import dependence on protective wear and certain medical products in barely two months, the mad rush to step up production had opened the floodgates to many fly-by-night operators who had skipped all quality norms. Arvind Baronia, head of critical care, Sanjay Gandhi Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, said the facility returned 60-70 per cent of the PPEs supplied. Dr Relhan and many others are seeking guidelines for choosing the right PPE after risk assessment for various levels of protection.There has been a flood of complaints about low-quality PPEs, sanitisers, gloves and so on, raising concerns about the impact on India’s public health response to Covid-19 and infection control strategies. Currently, there is no formal standard for the safe disposal of soiled PPEs.

It comes as no surprise that the rules of global trade went out of the window between February and April this year with nations fighting one another to secure supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE). And prices have dipped. He says the government should allow the export of PPEs meant for medical use only after regulating the quality protocols required for manufacturing. The Centre has given a new deadline to local PPE makers to put in their applications for approval of exports.This week, the Directorate-General of Foreign Trade issued a notification which said that the government had not found any applications from July 1 to 3 seeking to export PPE medical coveralls meeting the necessary criteria, and “all applications therefore have been found ineligible for allocation of export quota. There are few testing laboratories to validate quality and even after an increase in their number, “these labs are not sufficient to enable manufacturers to follow global standards”, says Dr Relhan.At the heart of the matter is the lack of standards.“Prof.Since a large number of PPE manufacturers are in the MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises sector), the MSME ministry and state governments should support them financially by bringing in a scheme for funding technology upgradation, counselling and training for both the Medical Devices Rules 2017 (India’s new rules for medical devices) as well as global regulations, especially those of the United States and Europe, and the certification costs.

The global PPE industry is expected to touch 92. It is difficult to spend even a few minutes in those made from cheap non-woven fabric with polyethylene lamination…” a recent report in the Indian Express noted.In the time of war or a pandemic, each country looks out for its own first. Atmanirbharta, or self-reliance, is facing a quality challenge in the protective gear market. Last month, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), which won the Nobel Prize in 1999, publicly urged for better regulation to ensure that personal protective equipment is distributed in an equitable and transparent China bandage factory manner during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals should not become amplifers of infection..The coronavirus pandemic has spawned a cottage industry in PPEs, hand sanitisers, masks, etc.” Last month, the government had decided to shift the export of PPEs from the “prohibited” to “restricted” category, with a permissible limit of 50 lakh kits. Much has changed since then.

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