Become A New Business Field, Many Inexperienced Medical Equipment Importers Appear In The Midst Of The COVID-19 Pandemic

Illustration of medical devices (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Secretary General of the Association of Indonesian Medical and Laboratory Equipment Company Organizations (Gakeslab Indonesia) Randy Teguh revealed that many inexperienced importers of medical equipment have emerged since the COVID-19 pandemic.

This was known after discussing with the Indonesian Hospital Association (PERSI) and laboratory and clinical associations.

"Currently, during the pandemic, many new entrepreneurs are impromptu. Because they may have to survive and be tempted by medical equipment services, there are many new clinics," said Randy in an online discussion, Saturday, October 30.

He said the proliferation of impromptu medical equipment entrepreneurs was due to being tempted to profit from the business in the health sector by taking advantage of the pandemic momentum.

In fact, not a few non-health clinics such as beauty clinics compete to provide real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) examination services.

In fact, such clinics have doubts about their ability to carry out COVID-19 tests because they are considered inexperienced.

"What used to be just a beauty salon clinic, so (there is a service, red) PCR test, which in fact might not be capable. This has to be done carefully," said Randy.

In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, importers of medical devices did not meet the standards. In fact, to become an importer of medical devices, one must have a number of requirements, such as a product license and a distribution permit number.

Randy said this happened because of the relaxation from the government but it was too much. So that the importers are not filtered properly.

"So this is because there is a bit of relaxation. But I see that this is going too far, it's really opened. There are so many companies whose industries were mining, minerals and coal, automotive, became importers of medical equipment," he said.

In fact, Randy revealed, according to data from the Ministry of Health, there were around 4,000 companies that were granted permission to distribute medical devices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whereas before the pandemic, the number of members of the Indonesian Gakeslab was only around 1,000 companies that distributed medical equipment and laboratory equipment.

"Our current members are almost 1,000. But if you look at the data from the Ministry of Health that issued permits to become distributors of medical devices, there are around 4,000," he concluded.