Hungary donates more ventilators to Ukraine

The Hungarian government is sending one hundred ventilators to Ukraine through the Hungarian Interchurch Aid, according to a government decision published in the Official Gazette on Thursday evening.

The resolution states that "the government agrees with a donation being given in the spirit of solidarity for alleviating the current humanitarian crisis in Ukraine". The ventilators will be delivered to medical institutions in Ukraine with the help of the Hungarian Interchurch Aid.

The government had also sent ventilators and other medical equipment to Ukraine last year. At the time, 200 ventilators, 250 patient monitors, 25 central monitors and 100 infusion pumps were delivered to the country.

Hvg.hu reports that according to the list attached to the decision, two types of machines are being donated: the smaller portion of them are Chinese Beijing Aeonmed VG70 machines. The government had already sent 65 of these to Ukraine last year, and in March this year Turkey received 10 of the same type after it was hit by a devastating earthquake.

This is the same model that was purchased by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through a Slovakian company during the Covid-19 pandemic at a price of €78,000, or around HUF 30 million apiece at today's exchange rate. In 2021, the investigative journalism center, Direkt 36 published a report about the Chinese device after several Hungarian hospitals received them during the pandemic, and there were a number of problems with them: for example, 10 percent of them started smoking during the installation.

Due to the product's several faults, the manufacturer issued a number of "urgent safety warnings" – some were software-related, while others were issued because the manual differed from the device's actual specifications. Direkt 36's source described the Beijing Aeonmed VG70 as belonging to the "not good but usable" category. Ukraine will now receive 24 such machines.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Hungary purchased a total of 16-17 thousand ventilators, mostly from China, for a total of about 300 billion forints (more than 782 million euros) Most of the deals were conducted by the state through intermediary companies, and there was also some gross overpricing – we wrote about this in detail in this article.

After several years of litigation, the government finally admitted in August this year that not a single ventilator from the stockpile has been sold since.

However, they have been generous in donating them, with more than 400 of the 16,000 ventilators purchased during the first wave donated to other countries before May 2021, for example to Mongolia last summer.