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Submission from Guardian Medical Supplies 4 April 2022
- It is our understanding that the UK and the republic of Ireland do not automatically provide free PPE to private healthcare professionals. Such professionals are advised to obtain such equipment from their usual suppliers, but if that is not available, or in any emergency, the governments will then give them assistance.
- Jersey has come up with an entirely different policy of giving free PPE without considering whether the private sector can obtain such items from local suppliers. This is harmful to local suppliers.
- We are an Approved Government Supplier so why were we not considered to supply PPE items to the Government for onward supply to the private sector.
- As of August 2021, the company has not received one enquiry from Government since March of the same year – to check what stocks we hold and what prices we could offer.
- The company would like to know where the government is obtaining PPE from, and how much it is costing.
- As an example of the impact, in March of 2020 a customer (a large care home) purchased £7,241.10 purchased of goods, the majority of which was PPE. For the month of August 2020 the same customer had only spent £215.77.
- The private sector were in a position to buy from us but would not do so if they were getting it for free.
- We informed Government that sales to local healthcare professionals were dropping very fast and that we had PPE supplies.
- We were concerned about the most vulnerable and for that reason, from the end of February 2020 we invested a huge amount to try to ensure that we had sufficient PPE for our customers. This stock is still held and will soon be out-of-date and, therefore, not sellable.
- Our aim was to let the Government to know we were in a position to supply most, if not all, PPE to Nursing, Care Homes and Care Agencies and other healthcare professionals on the island.
- We fully understood the government continuing to supply essential public services free of charge, but to continue to supply private businesses was hard to comprehend.