Australian manufacturers move to export ventilators to help coronavirus fight
A global shortage of life saving ventilators has countries lining up to buy equipment from Australia.
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Countries struggling to cope with massive coronavirus outbreaks are lining up to buy ventilators from Australia amid global shortages and fears of an over-reliance on China.
Indonesia, India and smaller nations in the Pacific could be the first to buy life saving Australian made medical equipment as local manufacturers switch their focus from supplying the domestic market to overseas demand.
Australia’s overnight success in stepping up the domestic capacity to produce personal protective equipment and ventilators has attracted significant interest, with the federal government fielding a number of requests from embassies about placing purchase orders.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials have been closely monitoring the progress of several companies designing innovative new ventilator prototypes, hoping to connect successful developers to interested buyers overseas.
Queensland company OzVader is expecting to receive approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration within days to immediately commence manufacturing 500 ventilators a week.
“There’s a lot of competition for conventional ventilator parts so we designed ours with rapid manufacture in mind using an abundant supply of alternative high quality industrial parts,” OzVader founder Tony Sprague said.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has awakened countries to the risk of losing local manufacturing capability.”
Mr Sprague said Ozvader has partnered with the Queensland University of Technology to produce training modules so health workers without intensive care training can learn how to use them.
“I didn’t see anyone coming to the aid of Indonesia, PNG, the Pacific Islands, even India so I decided to see if we could come up with a safe and effective, high quality ventilator to export we could help,” he said.
Established Sydney-based manufacturer Resmed has delivered 5,500 ventilators to the National Medical Stockpile ahead of schedule last month, and is now continuing to produce equipment at maximum capacity to help other countries deal with the pandemic.
Meanwhile Grey Innovation is leading a consortium of around 30 Australian manufacturers to produce 2,000 invasive ventilators for domestic hospitals, and will maintain the capacity to make 99.8 per cent of the component parts should demand spike again.
Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews said Australian manufactures had defied sceptics who believed it would not be possible to mass produce PPE locally and were now so successful other countries were chasing their expertise.
“I refused to accept the advice that Australian manufacturers would only be able to fill small gaps in supply,” she said.
“Now as we reach our targets here at home, we’re helping our manufacturers field inquiries from around the world – our ventilator capacity in particular has been a key point of discussion with our embassies.”
Ms Andrews said Australian production of essential medical supplies “should not be a novelty”.
“This needs to be capability that industry maintains well after we come out the other side,” she said.