At a time when healthcare professionals in India are facing shortage of critical medical equipment and protective gear, it has been alleged that 90 tonnes of medical protective equipment were exported to Serbia.
A tweet by UNDP Serbia confirmed this.
The 2nd cargo Boeing 747 with 90t of medical protective equipment landed from India to Belgrade today. The transportation of valuable supplies purchased by @SerbianGov has been fully funded by the #EU while @UNDPSerbia organized the flight & ensured the fastest possible delivery. pic.twitter.com/pMZqV7dwTg
— UNDP in Serbia (@UNDPSerbia) March 29, 2020
As per a report by NDTV, another such consignment of 30 tonnes was dispatched from Kochi on 29th March. It apparently included 35 lakh pairs of sterile surgical gloves.
Cochin customs in action to clear a consignment of 35 lakhs pairs of sterile latex surgical gloves to Serbia to support the global war against #COVID2019 #IndianCustomsAtWork #cbic pic.twitter.com/T6I7u04pow
— Cochin Customs (@cochin_customs) March 28, 2020
After the news of export of protective equipment went viral on social media, people started questioning the government.
Doctors are struggling here &#PMDoesNotCare about #coronavirus
— Dr Jwala Gurunath (@DrJwalaG) March 31, 2020
Can't understand the logic to send much needed medical equipments to foreign countries while having severe short supply at home.? 🤔
— Gautam (@g_kab35) March 31, 2020
What’s the logic of sending medical equipments to Serbia when there’s shortage of these items in our own country?
— Citizen / নাগরিক / Human Suman sengupta সুমন (@sumonseng) March 31, 2020
I'm baffled & bewildered at this.Doctors & other healthcare workers have an acute shortage of supplies & are being forced to protest to the authorities, at the risk of being vilified by the public.Yet concurrently,huge supplies are being sold overseas.Inexplicable negligence.
— Pradeep (@pradeep_deb) March 31, 2020
Following this, Luv Agrawal, Joint Secretary in the Union Health Ministry held a press conference and said:
I am not aware of this. I will check and revert with details.
It is still not clear what kind of equipment and gear the consignment contained, but according to the information provided by sources to India Today, none of the items exported to Serbia were from the ‘prohibited list’.
We have not exported anything from the prohibited list. However, items on the ‘restricted list’ can be sent in a case to case basis depending on the government policies, decisions, prior commitments after assessing info about availability, storage, production capacity, and anticipated demand.
A recent amendment in the export policy put masks, ventilators, textile raw material for masks and coveralls, in the ‘prohibited’ category of items that cannot be exported.
Given that availability and anticipated demand are also some of the criteria, it is questionable how such consignments containing protective medical gear were approved for export.
