The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, recently handed over respirators and other medical equipment for the Republic of Srpska in Krnješevci. The donation was taken over by the Chairman of the Presidency of B&H, Milorad Dodik. During the handover, Vučić also revealed the price of respirators that Serbia procured last year.

Patients treatment

- Serbia bought many respirators, the exact number is 2,200, and they were procured in the most difficult moments. No one in the world has announced the price yet. Today you can buy them cheaper, the price then ranged between 18 and 35 thousand euros. On average, 25-27 thousand euros - said Vučić.

According to the testimony of the director of KCUS, Sebija Izetbegović, the trial in the "Respirators" case continued in Sarajevo, in which the Prime Minister of the Federation Fadil Novalić, the suspended head of the Federal Civil Protection Administration Fahrudin Solak, the FB&H Minister of Finance Jelka Milićević and the owner of the company "Srebrena malina" Fikret Hodžić were accused of disputing the purchase of 100 devices for 10.5 million KM.

Sebija Izetbegović, who has long been speculated to have been the main operative behind the action, generally denied any connection to the case during her testimony, answering questions most often with "I don't know" and "I don't remember". During the trial,the prosecutor showed communication via Viber from April 28th, which Edita Kalajdžić, Secretary of the Government of the Federation, sent to another witness, Hasan Ganibegović: „Seb. is caling, respirators are bad, it's horror, we are in a huge problem,if it's true, and it probably is. „

One of Fadil's respirators, which Sebija Izetbegović, according to the witness, said were a horror, cost the citizens of the Federation 105,000 KM, or about 53,700 euros. Vučić revealed that the maximum price of the best one at that time was 35 thousand euros.

The Novalić's are paid far more, and as far as their quality is concerned, they can hardly be among the top ones. In the initial findings of the expert, it was determined that they do not have even the minimum necessary essential characteristics for adequate treatment of patients in intensive care units.

Dr. Almir Badnjević, director of the metrology laboratory "Verlab", warned that there is a system error in the software in the respirators and that when the oxygen concentration increases to 100 percent, the lungs can burst at that volume.

Everything is controversial

The Belgrade company "Professional Medical", which was supposed to install these devices at KCUS at the end of last year, stated that respirators do not have good flows when changing oxygen concentrations, which was confirmed by the director of that company, Jovan Roganović.

Prior to that, he discovered something about the price and type and claimed that he had previously sold them in the region at a price of 10 to 15 thousand dollars.

In the story of respirators, everything is controversial - from their quality, through purpose, to - ultimately - the price, which is many times higher than the best one that was offered on the market at that time. Now the greatest hope remains that the Prosecutor's Office of B&H will be able to expose to the end the extent of the obvious damage caused to the citizens of FB&H.

Respirators are on, people are dying

Although they received negative marks for almost a year, in February this year, the disputed respirators were verified and put into operation, and only at KCUS, 30 of them are currently activated. At the same time, the number of daily deaths from coronavirus in March in B&H is counted in tens daily.