Dear Maksim Volodymyrovich,

The Charitable Foundation “Patients of Ukraine” represents the interests of 28 patients’ communities associated with 1.5 million people battling serious illnesses. As representatives of these organizations we are addressing you with the following.

We have learned from the open sources that the Ministry of Health of Ukraine is manipulating the tender conditions and blocking procurement organized by the State Enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine to acquire protective suits for doctors fighting coronavirus. Instead MoH conducted self-organized procurement of protection means for doctors at price 2 times exceeding the market prices.

If you are not aware of the scandal unfolding around procurement of protective suits we wish to bring to your notice the chronology of the events:

On April 10, the MOH ordered the SE Medical Procurement of Ukraine to procure 90,000 protective suits. Following this order the SE Medical Procurement of Ukraine conducted a tender in accordance with all the requirements specified by MoH.
Ukrainian manufacturer Textile-Contact won the tender and offered the lowest price of UAH 245 per piece. The total amount of the contract is 22 million UAH, which is 40% savings. This means that the saved money may be spent for procuring even more protective suits (approximately another 50 thousand). The contract was signed and the manufacturer started working. Textile-Contact was about to supply the first batch of suits (about 20 thousand pieces) already on April 21!

In the meantime, the Ministry of Health completely ignored the tender of the SE Medical Procurement of Ukraine and, on the night of April 15, published changes to the Prozorro Annual Procurement Plan, indicating that they wanted to buy 71,374 protective suits worth 500 UAH a piece using the money already allocated by the results of the tender.

On April 17 the Ministry of Health published a procurement contract for supplying 71 374 protective suits for a larger amount of UAH 34.8 million ( UAH 488.6 per piece) from the Chinese distributor of protective means MEDDIV, which has been operating on the Ukrainian market for 11 months and has no major deliveries yet.

The Ministry of Health explains its decision by the fact that the Ukrainian manufacturer does not have the DSTU EN 14126 certification under the guise of a high degree of protection provided by this certificate and their concern about doctors.
In fact, this is manipulation. This certification is mostly required for procurement of multiple-use laboratory suits while MOH has purchased disposable biological protective suits from a Chinese company. The Ukrainian company has all the necessary documents for disposable biological protective suits. It should be added that the MoH order to the SE Medical Procurement of Ukraine did not specify this requirement.

Therefore, a logical question arises. Does your team have careless executives who cannot understand the issue of protecting doctors during a pandemic or are these corrupt practices?

We, the patient organization representing 1.5 million people battling serious illnesses, and the organization that first mobilized to protect doctors from coronavirus, demand answers:

• Already for a month we have been purchasing protective means for doctor. We raised $ 4 million from people and business: https://bit.ly/2z9KPzE. Where are the government and the Ministry at this time? Why are hospitals still lacking the necessary protection? Why do doctors run to us for help?
• Why is the Ministry taking over procurement while an honest and transparent state purchaser, SE Medical Procurement of Ukraine is already operating in Ukraine?
• Why do we observe manipulation and deception again? For how long are you going to decide the fate of million UAH tenders behind the scenes?
• Why do ‘managers’ of the d days of Bogatyreva return to the Ministry?

Honorable Minister of Health, if you think that no one knows who now manages procurements at the Ministry, you are sadly at fault. We know that Galina Dovganchyn, the Head of the Tender Committee at the days of Bogatyreva and an actor of more than one corruption scandal, has begun to manage the procurement in the Ministry.

The patients’ community requires explanations and clear answers to the above questions.

Let’s put it straight, the Ministry of Health should not be a procurement ministry. It should not perform the procurement functions.

Misappropriation of government funds and making money on patients and doctors as it was in the days of Bogatyreva will never work again. The times when the Ministry in a manual mode procured medicines and medical products, held fixed tenders when the winner was known beforehand and designed the corruption schemes for its own benefit are in the past!