Oxygen Shortage Threatens COVID Patients in Morocco as Concentrator Prices Soar

The situation is such that medical oxygen concentrators, also used in unpressurized aircraft cabins to compensate for the lack of oxygen in the air, are used by people with coronavirus suffering from respiratory failure, reports L’Economiste.

In addition to this shortage, the equipment is expensive: "Prices have risen sharply due to the increase in sea and air freight costs. This results in an additional cost of up to 50% depending on the products," complains Anouar Yadini, president of the Moroccan Association of Medical Device Professionals, who, since last April, has alerted the Minister of Health: "The usual suppliers are either in production shutdown or in a situation of orders exceeding their production capacities, resulting in delivery times going up to the end of 2020 for certain devices."

And then, the procedure for obtaining the specific Covid-19 authorizations remains cumbersome and the required documents are difficult to obtain from international suppliers during the health crisis. Also, the professionals have proposed the provisional lifting of the requirement for the certificate of registration for the import of all medical equipment for the five months following, so that "the law is more a means of control than a barrier to activity," suggests Anouar Yadini.

A request that has gone unanswered, the publication points out, stressing that the Directorate of Medicines and Pharmacy, seized in November, insists on the strict application of the regulations in force, in particular Law 84-12 on medical devices, which is the core of the problem.