Bolivia receives from Spain a first batch of equipment to treat COVID-19
Bolivia received this Thursday a first batch of 170 ventilators developed in Spain for coronavirus patients in critical condition, aimed at reinforcing care for COVID-19 patients in hospitals in the South American country.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) financed the purchase and transfer of the equipment from the Spanish city of Barcelona, according to a statement from this entity.
"The emergency ventilators called Respira were developed in record time by the Hospital Clinic and the University of Barcelona to respond to the global hospital demand for this type of equipment, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic," the report highlighted.
The teams, at a cost of about 5 million dollars, arrived at the Santa Cruz airport, the main airport in Bolivia, to be distributed to the regions most affected in the country by this disease, according to the IDB.
Precisely Santa Cruz, the most extensive and populated region of Bolivia, is the most affected by the coronavirus in the country, with 72 of the 142 deaths and 2,041 of the 3,148 confirmed cases in the national set, according to official data.
The respirators from Spain arrived on an exceptional flight from the Bolivian State Aviation (BoA), since the airspace is closed in Bolivia, except for humanitarian and emergency reasons, due to the restrictions established by the declared state of sanitary emergency in the country since last March.
The flight included other equipment, up to three and a half tons of cargo, to be distributed in the country from the Viru Viru airport in Santa Cruz, according to the interim government of Bolivia.
The Acting Minister of Government (Interior) of Bolivia, Arturo Murillo, delivered part of the respirators at the Japanese Hospital in Santa Cruz, the largest Bolivian city with more than 1.5 million inhabitants.
