PPE mismanagement


A report by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has revealed that £4 billion of unusable personal protective equipment (PPE), bought during the pandemic, will have to be destroyed. 


These include items found to be defective, including gowns that are not water-repellent and counterfeit masks. 


BMA doctors’ union council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said the report illustrates the government’s “completely inadequate preparedness for a pandemic and the resulting chaos that ensued as it scrambled to procure PPE far too late, through unsuitable and untested routes, meaning much of it was unusable, and ultimately, unsafe”. 


And RCN nurses’ union general secretary Pat Cullen said: “If this money had been used more wisely and decent quality PPE bought in the first place, then the lives of nursing staff might have been saved.”