Sunday, April 19, 2020

The Mystery of Disappearing Chinese Manufacturing Ethics

"The stuff was at the airport ready to be shipped. We had it on the tarmac. I was hearing on the news about companies bringing in 10,000 masks, 5,000 masks -- and we have five million masks coming."
"Then the craziest thing happened."
"To this day I have no idea where that shipment went. It's like somebody pulled up with a truck, picked up our pallets and put them on a different plane and it disappeared and nobody will know because it was just cash changing hands."
"It was like the Wild West at the airport."
Manny Kapur,  Xthetica, wellness supply

"We never got the shipment onto the airplane. It turns out we were suddenly outbid. [It sounded like] modern day pirates."
"We started with looking for masks but it is all about protecting each other from COVID-19."

Dr.Elaine Chin, medical director, Executive Health Centre, Toronto
Medical masks being Shanghaied, FR24 News

Dr.Elaine Chin, a Toronto doctor, arranged with a business colleague to have five million medical masks shipped from a manufacturer in China directly to Canada to help in the fight against COVID-19. That was away back in early March. Having contacted a manufacturer who agreed to sell the duo the masks, requiring a $500,000 down payment to secure the shipment, Dr.Chin and Mr. Kapur closed the deal, and made shipping arrangements.

It all started when Dr.Chin, recalling her and her husband's involvement during the epidemic of SARS in 2003, found herself trepidatious for public health in Canada given her previous involvement in the SARS epidemic. So she decided to source medical masks, beginning with making them available to a cancer patient of hers with an obviously compromised immune system. She asked Mr. Kapur if he could procure a box of masks for her patient.

He did some homework and through calls to contacts realized masks were in short supply. He called a contact in Europe who informed him masks were being ordered from China and that was where he should focus for the supply he wanted, as long as he could meet the minimum order requirement. "I can't get you one mask, but I think I can get you two million", he informed Dr.Chin. And so both together decided to give it a try.

Friends of influence and clients donated some of the needed funding and then they were left to tap into their personal lines of credit to make certain they could gather the $500,000 down payment for the five million N95-equivalent masks they decided to obtain. March 18 their order was confirmed, set to arrive March 23. In the interim, Canadian government ministers and health officials, hearing of the order, called to express interest and offer assistance.

Dr.Chin and Mr. Kapur lined up private donors for mask purchase to turn around and donate them to hospitals. "It was all working out just fine. Then it all blew up in the ether", explained Dr.Chin. Their assured shipment had gone to a higher bidder. They were at the airport in Shanghai to supervise the transfer of their ordered shipment to Canada, directly from the Chinese manufacturer. The 'crazy thing' that happened is that the Chinese manufacturer found the offer from a shipment-competitor too alluring to pass up.

So much for business ethics and the morality of doing business with manufacturers whose reliability can be handily turned at the whiff of greater profit. They were informed while at the airport that a sudden offer four times the price they had agreed upon simply short-circuited their contract. Then, out of their disappointment they created a campaign to raise funds for the COVID-19 fight in Canada.

Through the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto, Dr.Chin initiated the Masking Together Challenge, to work to provide personal protective equipment to medical personnel across Canada. Securing the PPE from sources other than China and as well funding accommodations for medical trainees required to isolate, and for COVID-19 research.
"We need to make sure there is a safe sanctuary for residents and interns and fellows who are on the front line and still making student wages."
"The pandemic is an unprecedented event on a global scale. We need to dig deep and think about solutions, and how we can each do our part."
"We started with looking for masks, but it is all about protecting each other from COVID-19."
Dr.Elaine Chin
A sample of the five million medical masks Dr. Elaine Chin and Manny Kapur were buying from China for Canadian doctors and patients in the COVID-19 fight. Supplied

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posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 19, 2020

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Do As I Say : Don't Look At Me!

"A bonspiel is not an essential activity."
"I know our health-care providers are under a lot of pressure and scrutiny right now, but hard not to wonder why this event took place."
Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy, professor, faculties of law and public health, University of Alberta

"There have been no deaths linked to this bonspiel. No patients have tested positive with COVID-19 to date."
"At this time, no other patients appear to have been exposed from cases to the bonspiel."
"[Any disciplinary action would be from the provincial physicians' colleges; the focus is on] caring for patients."
"It is not on disciplining physicians, particularly at a time when we need them the most."
Alberta government statement
Curling
Curling rocks are shown Friday, Feb. 10, 2017, during a media demonstration the day before the opening ceremonies of the USA Curling Nationals in Everett, Wash. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Ted S. Warren)
We are so hugely -- as a public faced with the fears of an infectious global pandemic that has skulked its way into Canada from its emergent home in Wuhan, China -- dependent on the army of skilled medical professionals to care for us in illness and restore us to health, if and when possible. Physicians, secure in their professional knowledge, their practised experience, their diagnostic and healing skills, are the most trusted group of professionals the world over. For the most part, they earn that trust.

But as humans with all the failings of any human being they can at times spectacularly fail that trust.
And this is precisely what occurred when a decision was made to proceed with an annual curling event that brings together health professionals from the Western provinces of Canada. Where, despite knowing that COVID-19 has a swift and deadly spread, and to deter that spread as much as possible people should maintain a safe distance from others to self-protect and protect others from the highly infectious novel coronavirus, 72 people with medical degrees chose to attend the event.

Now three of the attendees from Alberta are known to have become infected with the virus at the tournament that took place in Edmonton. Before they became aware that they were infected, and thus vectors, they had contact with patients and with their colleagues. Twelve in fact, of the 47 Alberta health care workers at the bonspiel which took place between March 11 and 14, tested positive for COVID-19. A situation that calls for them to self-isolate for at least two weeks, placing them outside the health-care system as patients, not as badly-needed practitioners.

Three of the twelve -- physicians in Red Deer, Alberta -- had physical contact with patients and co-workers so that 58 patients were attended to during the course of normal medical business by the doctors involved before they became symptomatic. Add other possible infections counting the 97 other health professionals these doctors' indiscretion may have contaminated. And if so, unbeknownst to those 97, their contact with their own patients would have rippled beyond the initial contact. This is how contamination spirals.

This situation was first brought to light when Dr.Allan Woo, head of the Saskatchewan Medical Association publicly revealed that he had been infected with the novel coronavirus due to his attendance at the bonspiel in Edmonton. Now, Saskatchewan has announced that 11 of their 22 health professionals attending the event also tested positive for COVID-19. Three doctors in Manitoba are self-isolating, having attended the event. 

Well, so much for the wisdom of doctors. And wait, other medical professionals as well have proven to be as unwary -- as when earlier in the month the Pacific Dental Conference that took place in Vancouver at which close to 15,000 dentists and hygienists attended also appears to have resulted in a COVID-19 outbreak. Reports of infections are beginning to emerge, one in particular, the death of a dentist who attended that event.

Students walk past a sign at the south entrance to the University of Calgary on Tuesday February 26, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia
Two people from the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an Edmonton curling bonspiel that played host to more than 50 physicians last weekend, the university said in an email to faculty and students Friday. The University of Calgary is pictured on Tuesday February 26, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

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posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 26, 2020

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