THE Department of Health asserted on Tuesday that the personal protective equipment (PPE) sets it procured from the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) are cheaper and on a par with World Health Organization (WHO) standards.
In a statement, the DOH said the PPE sets include nine components such as coverall suits, gloves, N95 mask, head cover, shoe cover, surgical mask, surgical gown, apron and face shield.
“Moreover, despite the high level of demand and limited global supply, the PPE sets were procured at a much lower cost than pre-Covid19 prices. The DOH was able to procure the PPE sets from PS-DBM at a price ranging from P 1,700 to less than P2,000. They were also cheaper than the DOH’s allocated budget of P 2,000 per unit as contained in the Purchase Request (PR) to the PS-DBM.”
The DOH issued the clarification as Health Secretary Francisco Duque III continued to face grilling from senators at the fourth hearing of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, now inquiring into the Commission on Audit report on DOH’s 2020 pandemic-response purchases.
The DOH underscored in its statement that, as a general rule in procurement, reference to any brand name is not allowed.
The Department explained that the technical specifications set during the procurement of the PPE sets were based on WHO Standards.
Additionally, the DOH said, the PPE sets delivered were inspected, verified, and found to be in order and conformity with the technical specifications set. The DOH did not receive any complaints from healthcare workers on the quality of the PPE sets procured.
At the Blue Ribbon, former budget undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao, who headed PS-DBM when the DOH transferred P42 billion of its budget to PS-DBM to cover the COA-flagged purchases, repeated the claim that from the field, they got words of appreciation from some healthcare workers on the “good quality” of the PPEs. That claim was earlier made by vaccine czar Carlito Galvez.
The DOH also said that through a “whole of government, whole of nation, whole of society approach,” it was able to immediately provide a huge number of PPE sets to healthcare workers during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lao claimed at the hearing that the number of deaths among healthcare workers went down after the PPE sets were distributed. The deaths had spiked early on in the pandemic, as many doctors and nurses were deployed in the battle against Covid-19 with inadequate protection.