The shipment included 100 ventilators and 200,000 face masks bought by Governor Flávio Dino. In anticipation of confiscation by the national government, the delivery was addressed to São Paolo before it was sent to the northeastern state.

A report by Folha de S.Paulo said that the specific route from Ethiopia need not pass through the Brazilian Bureau of Customs. Instead, the shipment was loaded onto a chartered plane for direct delivery to Maranhão, which had a shortage in supply of personal protective equipment and ventilators.


Procurement of Ventilators Done in Secret

In response to the inadequate management of the federal government in addressing the pandemic, local authorities in Brazil's northeastern states decided to take matters into their own hands.

Secretary of Industry and Commerce Simplício Araújo explained that the secrecy was crucial.

He said, "If we didn't do it that way, it would take us three months to get this number of ventilators."

The shipment of goods was made as a last resort by the Maranhão local government since past attempts were sabotaged.

Araujo shared that the state was supposed to receive delivery of 150 ventilators from a local supplier, but it was confiscated by the national health ministry last March. They tried again from a supplier in China, but the shipment was held in Germany. Their third attempt at procuring the goods failed when the supply was simply not sent to Maranhão from customs.

Because of the pandemic, healthcare institutes all over the world were racing for the procurement of medical supplies. In Brazil, similar to the situation in the U.S., the struggle to meet the demand of the medical supply resulted in internal government conflict.

States were competing for healthcare materials for containment measures, and most of the hospitals had to import equipment internationally.

In a report published by S&P Global Market Intelligence, data gathered between March 1 to April 4 showed that companies from China exported over 16,000 ventilators worldwide. Now, near the peak of the pandemic, the numbers must double.

Shanghai-based healthcare analyst Zhao Bing said that Chinese companies were increasing the production of ventilators in the face of severe shortages in countries like Brazil. Bing added that this surge in demand for ventilators would eventually break into tough markets.


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Politics Amid the Pandemic

In the previous month, the superintendent of Instituto Dr. José Frota Hospital in Ceara and Dr. Riane Avezado successfully acquired a cache of ventilators to treat the patients in the intensive care unit.

She had the equipment shipped from an international company because their local supplier sent their reserved shipment to Brazil's federal government after it was confiscated.

Governors of Brazil's nine northeastern states formed Concórcio Nordeste, an alliance that is independent of the federal government's support.

Analysts predicted that political competition could aggravate the growing healthcare crisis in Brazil, which has 50,230 positive cases and 3,343 deaths as of Friday, the highest number of cases in Latin America.

A professor at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas University believed that there was a lack of trust between the Brazilian federal authorities and the governors. Professor Walter Cintra Ferreira Jr. added, "What we expect from the health ministry is a quick distribution of resources."