National Task Force (NTF) Deputy Chief Implementer Vince Dizon on Thursday, Sept. 2, defended the national government's procurement of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response supplies, particularly the personal protective equipment (PPE), bought for healthcare workers during the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Earlier, Secretary Carlito G. Galvez Jr. said each medical grade PPE, priced at P1,700, is composed of medical-grade cover-all, gloves, head cover, shoe cover, goggles, N95 mask, surgical mask, and surgical gown.
"Nung time na yun kami ni Secretary Galvez we were going around hospitals, talaga pong walang PPE sa ating mga ospital at talagang marami po sa ating mga doctor, nurse ay nagkakasakit (At that time, Secretary Galvez and I were going around hospitals. There were really no PPEs in our hospitals and many of our doctors and nurses were getting sick)," Dizon said in a virtual briefing.
He noted that at that time, in Metro Manila alone, there were close to 40 doctors who were in the intensive care unit, Dizon said they were infected because "there were not enough PPEs."
"Kami po talaga ni Sec. Galvez nagkukumahog kami, nagmamakawa kami both sa Department of Health (DOH) and even sa private sector (Sec. Galvez and I were really struggling, we were begging both the DOH and the private sector) to help us really provide the much needed PPE sa ating healthcare workers," Dizon added.
He said the Office of Civil Defense and PS-DBM had to help because "they have the expertise in procurement."
"At that time the DOH really could not handle it anymore, lahat po ng ginagawa ng DOH nun (everything the DOH did at that time) was really meant to control the pandemic on the ground. That was the reason why the other agencies of the government got involved and I think what was done to really scan the market," Dizon explained.
"I think that was really diligent on the part of procuring entities to look at the prevailing market prices. Market prices are based on supply and demand, if there's more supply, it's cheaper. If there's more demand, it's obviously more expensive. At that time, there was really a tremendous demand not only domestically, all our hospitals were looking for PPEs, we also had to compete with the demand from other countries," he added.
Dizon maintained that both the Department of Trade and Industry and DBM did a market scan of the prices.
"Today, those prices were actually higher than the prices that were eventually procured by the DBM."