Professor Diwakar Vaish, the owner of AgVa Healthcare that has been manufacturing ventilators amidst the Coronavirus crisis, has said that international actors are trying to sabotage the product manufactured under the Make in India initiative after Rahul Gandhi claimed that the government was procuring ‘substandard’ ventilators from his company.
“Rahul Gandhi is not a doctor. He is an intelligent man. He should have done due diligence before making such allegations. He should have consulted doctors. I am ready to give a detailed demonstration in the hospital on any patient,” the professor said.
#WATCH: Prof. Diwakar Vaish, Co-founder AgVa Healthcare, responds to Rahul Gandhi’s tweet of a media report alleging technical glitches in AgVa ventilators pic.twitter.com/zNhonHOG7X
— ANI (@ANI) July 7, 2020
Professor Diwakar Vaish also said that the faulty recordings was due to the fact that the ventilator was unique and if they were installed in a wrong manner without keeping AgVa Healthcare in the loop, then it could have led to faulty readings. He said that doctors had to be explained and given a demonstration on how to use them.
The professor said, “LNJP Hospital in Delhi did not reject our ventilator. They said our ventilators do not have BIPAP and CPAP. But later they sent us an e-mail confirming that our ventilators have BIPAP and CPAP… As far as Mumbai is concerned, JJ Hospital and St George Hospital got the installation done through a third-party. They did not install it properly. Hence, their doctors could not use it. If you put diesel instead of petrol, what would happen?”
#WATCH: Prof. Diwakar Vaish, Co-founder AgVa Healthcare, on media reports alleging glitches in their ventilators installed in some hospitals of Delhi and Mumbai. pic.twitter.com/RbGQ0zhJ3R
— ANI (@ANI) July 7, 2020
Professor Diwakar Vaisha also demonstrated that the ventilator was working properly. He added, “I would like to say that our ventilator is unique. We need to explain that if not used properly, it will not function. Later when our engineer went, they pointed out two mistakes – FiO2 (Concentration of Oxygen a patient inhales) should be central automatic and NIV should have 100 per cent oxygen.”
He said, “We explained to them that these two are not in this model, but can be upgraded. On May 26, our engineers went. What the hospitals did before that we do not know. I went there on June 30 and gave them a demonstration. It was working. We have a video recording, it is working on patients.”
#WATCH: Prof. Diwakar Vaish, Co-founder AgVa Healthcare gives a demo of AgVa ventilator after reports of problems in FiO2 levels and other technical glitches. pic.twitter.com/JcoDXvvYMR
— ANI (@ANI) July 7, 2020
Professor Diwakar Vaish also said, “We have not made the ventilator overnight. We have been in the market for three years. We have developed this step by step. This ventilator has all parameters that a normal ventilator has…Our ventilators are five to ten times cheaper than normal ventilators. A normal ventilator costs Rs 10-20 lakh.”
He added, “Our ventilator is just Rs 1.5 lakh. In this, international vendor nexus is very strong. Just like when Indian military equipment was indigenised, there was a lot of negative reviews. The same thing is happening here. What a Rs 10 lakh ventilator does, ours is doing for Rs 1.5 lakh. Will international associations, international vendors accept this? That is why they are trying to sabotage.”
Rahul gandhi had tweeted the link of a report by Huffington Post that claimed that the AgVa Healthcare ventilators “fudged” software in the product to hide their poor performance.
