TS govt's dialysis services tender favours only one company!
Sources on the condition of anonymity in the government reveal it to be an exercise to benefit the existing project participant, a distributor for a Japanese manufacturer of the dialysis machines and consumables
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Hyderabad: The Telangana Government has announced a social healthcare project worth Rs 2,000 crore, whereby the State plans to offer free dialysis services at over 100 locations. Still, dialysis services providers cannot participate in this tender independently.
The Telangana government wants dialysis machines and consumables manufacturers to be part of this project; no services tender has such a clause across India or even across the world. Such unique bizarre requirement of manufacturer in the bidding consortium for a service contract smacks of corruption and lack of transparency.
Sources on the condition of anonymity in the government reveal it to be an exercise to benefit the existing project participant, a distributor for a Japanese manufacturer of the dialysis machines and consumables. Moreover, the tender qualifying criteria for such an ambitious project are very shallow to ensure this distributor qualifies for this project.
The State health department expects a company that has a turnover of Rs 25 crore to invest around Rs 150 crore in a few months from the award of the contract. It is surprising how the department is willing to risk 21,000 dialysis patients' lives by allowing such small companies with very limited experience and funds to qualify.
Moreover, any company experienced in running dialysis centers for two years with a few machines can be given the responsibility to build, operate & manage these 1,250 machines across 100 dialysis centers for eight years.
Interestingly, the Telangana government is paying Rs 1,450 per dialysis treatment for the last five years to a company under the PPP program because the government wants to offer dialysis with a single-use dialyser. This clause again favors the manufacturer since the consumption of dialysers increases eight folds without having any superior clinical outcomes.
Moreover, this puts an additional burden on the honest tax payers via the finances of the Government. For the last 15 years, the Government offers free dialysis treatment in private hospitals under the Aarogyasri scheme at Rs 1,250 only, where multiple uses of dialyzer for the same patient are allowed. Under Aarogyasri Scheme, the Government does not provide any facilities to the private hospital, but in the PPP project, the Government offers free land, water and electricity too.
The entire way this tender is drafted to favor a particular small dialysis consumables distributor and its manufacturing partner speaks volumes about the lack of transparency and competitive fair play. Furthermore state taxpayers are unnecessarily burdenedby including clauses that unnecessarily increase the project's cost when equivalent clinical outcomes can be achieved at much lower prices.
