Agency under attack after PPE wasted
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ostmedia News
Publishing date:Apr 28, 2021 • 16 hours ago • 2 minute read • 10 Comments
N95 masks.
N95 masks. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA FILE PHOTO /Postmedia
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Critics are trying to understand why the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) allowed a stockpile of emergency personal protective equipment (PPE) to lie around unused until it was past its best-before date.
A year before millions of N95 masks and medical gloves became crucial equipment in the pandemic, they were thrown away.
The National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS) has a network of storage facilities across the country where medical supplies are kept. Even as the pandemic began to unfold across Canada last year, some warehouses were discarding their supplies.
The decision to throw away the PPE rather than distribute it where it might still have had some use, has also been criticized.
Canada’s emergency preparedness has been in a state of disarray for some years — a Senate committee laid the blame for that at the feet of Canada’s Conservative government in 2008 — but New Democrat MP Matthew Green is making political hay over the situation.
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He calls the discarded PPE a national scandal and says PHAC’s mismanagement raises questions of criminal liability, according to a story in Blacklock’s Reporter.
Green said “24,000 people died. There was absolutely a duty of this government to distribute critical life-saving personal protective equipment to frontline health-care workers, and that failed to happen.”
“I have been waiting on this information for a year,” said Green.
PHAC said in a report it threw away more than 8.8-million items with the closure of warehouses in the two-year period leading to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Management closed three warehouses to save $900,000 in leasing costs.
The agency had a $675 million budget at the time.
Discarded medical supplies included 5.4 million high-grade N95 masks, 2.4 million surgical masks, more than one million medical gloves, and 3,010 surgical gowns. For reasons of national security, the agency cannot specify which warehouses were involved.
Of course, once the pandemic hit Canada, the country was caught with its pants down on supplies of PPE, as were the U.S. and most of Europe.
PHAC managers in testimony last May 18 at the Commons government operations committee refused to disclose the state of pandemic preparedness.
Records indicate PHAC hired a consultant to “find a more effective and cost-efficient solution” to storing pandemic supplies in a national network of nine warehouses.
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MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Staff from the Public Health Agency complained about the “environmental impact” of used masks being discarded even though the agency itself landfilled two million N95 masks and 440,000 gloves when it closed a Regina warehouse prior to the pandemic in 2019.
Report: All that PPE Canadians are using is creating a lot of waste
photo illustration
LILLEY UNLEASHED: Why did Trudeau strike $375M deals with China for PPE?
PPE for health-care workers.
Canada tested masks in Florida when COVID-19 began
“The assessment found that strategically moving from nine warehouses to six would increase management efficiency while effectively providing the same response capacity,” said a briefing note from the consultant. “The federal government would also save $900,000.”
Why the discarded masks were never replaced by new ones has not been explained, but then, a pandemic was not on the horizon when those decisions were made.
torontosun.com
Author of the article
ostmedia NewsPublishing date:Apr 28, 2021 • 16 hours ago • 2 minute read • 10 Comments
N95 masks.
N95 masks. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA FILE PHOTO /Postmedia
Article content
Critics are trying to understand why the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) allowed a stockpile of emergency personal protective equipment (PPE) to lie around unused until it was past its best-before date.
A year before millions of N95 masks and medical gloves became crucial equipment in the pandemic, they were thrown away.
The National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS) has a network of storage facilities across the country where medical supplies are kept. Even as the pandemic began to unfold across Canada last year, some warehouses were discarding their supplies.
The decision to throw away the PPE rather than distribute it where it might still have had some use, has also been criticized.
Canada’s emergency preparedness has been in a state of disarray for some years — a Senate committee laid the blame for that at the feet of Canada’s Conservative government in 2008 — but New Democrat MP Matthew Green is making political hay over the situation.
Advertisement
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
He calls the discarded PPE a national scandal and says PHAC’s mismanagement raises questions of criminal liability, according to a story in Blacklock’s Reporter.
Green said “24,000 people died. There was absolutely a duty of this government to distribute critical life-saving personal protective equipment to frontline health-care workers, and that failed to happen.”
“I have been waiting on this information for a year,” said Green.
PHAC said in a report it threw away more than 8.8-million items with the closure of warehouses in the two-year period leading to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Management closed three warehouses to save $900,000 in leasing costs.
The agency had a $675 million budget at the time.
Discarded medical supplies included 5.4 million high-grade N95 masks, 2.4 million surgical masks, more than one million medical gloves, and 3,010 surgical gowns. For reasons of national security, the agency cannot specify which warehouses were involved.
Of course, once the pandemic hit Canada, the country was caught with its pants down on supplies of PPE, as were the U.S. and most of Europe.
PHAC managers in testimony last May 18 at the Commons government operations committee refused to disclose the state of pandemic preparedness.
Records indicate PHAC hired a consultant to “find a more effective and cost-efficient solution” to storing pandemic supplies in a national network of nine warehouses.
Advertisement
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
Staff from the Public Health Agency complained about the “environmental impact” of used masks being discarded even though the agency itself landfilled two million N95 masks and 440,000 gloves when it closed a Regina warehouse prior to the pandemic in 2019.
Report: All that PPE Canadians are using is creating a lot of waste
photo illustration
LILLEY UNLEASHED: Why did Trudeau strike $375M deals with China for PPE?
PPE for health-care workers.
Canada tested masks in Florida when COVID-19 began
“The assessment found that strategically moving from nine warehouses to six would increase management efficiency while effectively providing the same response capacity,” said a briefing note from the consultant. “The federal government would also save $900,000.”
Why the discarded masks were never replaced by new ones has not been explained, but then, a pandemic was not on the horizon when those decisions were made.
Agency under attack after PPE wasted
Critics are trying to understand why the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) allowed a stockpile of emergency personal protective equipment (PPE) to lie…
