Scandal of NHS gear destroyed because it’s useless
Millions of masks and goggles binned
Nearly £ 600,000 of NHS protective equipment was destroyed after failing tests, with other PPE linked to Chinese labour camps.
We can reveal that millions of masks and goggles were binned after a rush to secure vital PPE as Covid struck.
They included:
90,000 respirator valve masks made by US firm Medline.
Three million pairs of goggles, lenses and frames from US company Tiger Medical Products.
66,000 poorly made face masks from Dumfries-based Alpha Solway.
700 charity- donated masks it was feared were made at forced-labour camps in China.
The NHS’s National Services Scotland (NSS) – which handles procurement for the 14 health boards – has been involved in the destruction of the PPE.
The Scottish and UK governments were forced to rush through millions of pounds worth of PPE contracts at the start of the pandemic after fears they were hours away from running out.
More than £340million of spending in Scotland came under scrutiny from public spending watchdog Audit Scotland but a report last week found contracts were handed out “fairly”.
Royal College of Nursing Scotland’s interim director Colin Poolman said: “Nursing staff need to feel safe and deserve to be supplied with the correct PPE. At the beginning of the pandemic we received frequent reports from our members who were concerned that they did not have adequate or correct equipment.”
The Sunday Mail can reveal that last July 90,000 Mask Respirator Valved FR masks made by Medl ine were destroyed by NHS chiefs. The order, which cost £ 90,000, was destroyed because NHS boards using them reported “high fit-test failure rates”.
The masks had failed shelf-life tests and, although the Health and Safety Executive said it was safe to use the stock already in circulation, the Scottish Government ordered the NSS to withdraw them.
In June the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care told the NSS to destroy over three million pairs of goggles and lenses it had bought from
Tiger Medical Products. The orders, worth over £500,000, were part of the UK’s pandemic stockpile but experts feared they were no use against Covid.
And in November NHS Lothian and Tayside raised issues with the nose wires in respirator masks made by Alpha Solway. But the 66,000 affected masks were collected by the company, which replaced them.
The firm had been awarded a £53million deal for PPE in 2020 to make 232million surgical masks and six million respirator masks.
The NSS destroyed more than 700 face masks it feared were made in
forced-labour camps in China by a company called Medwell Medical Products earlier this year.
The masks were given to the NSS by a charity. But fears emerged the masks had been made by Uighur Muslims held in prison camps in the north-west Xinjiang province.
The Scottish Government ordered NSS to destroy 720 medical-grade face masks made by Medwell after an inquiry found about 25 per cent of its workforce came from Xinjiang.
Naomi McAul i f fe, Amnest y International’s Scotland programme director, said: “NHS Scotland were right to destroy masks suspected of being manufactured under conditions of forced labour but must maintain robust ethical sourcing standards.”
Last week, while Audit Scotland said the contracts were given out “fairly”, it found the NSS had failed to publish details of the direct awards on time in 80 per cent of the contracts.
A previous report by Audit Scotland in June said some PPE was just eight hours away from running out.
Last May NSS director Jim Miller said the PPE being mass-produced for health and care workers “may not be of as high quality as we would like”.
Gordon Beattie, director of national procurement for NSS, said: “NSS has played an essential role in securing Scotland’s supplies of PPE during the pandemic. This PPE has been crucial in limiting the transmission of the virus by protecting health and social care workers and people they care for.
“Between March 2020 and April 2021, NSS supplied 1.1billion items of PPE to health and social care.
“As highlighted in the Audit Scotland report, no issues were identified with the quality of PPE procured by NSS or the companies it contracted.”
Alpha Solway, Medline and Tiger Medical Products were all asked to comment on the issues with their PPE supplies but did not respond.