On its own, the Brazilian private sector begins to reconvert the industry.
The great challenge of the Brazilian economy is the war effort for the reconversion, that is, for the capacity of the Brazilian industry to add efforts to the manufacture of the equipment necessary for the coronavirus war.
This movement has already started, coordinated by the Brazilian Association of the Industry of Medical and Dental Equipment with the adhesion of large industrial associations and companies. The reconversion work involves production, logistical and engineering efforts. However, a large industrial chain was quickly assembled to ease the situation in the shortest possible time.
The Brazilian Association of Machinery and Equipment Industry has made its park available. The big automakers, Fiat and GM, the Embraer, aircraft manufacturer and other giants, made their entire technical staff, production processes and logistical capacity available to medical device companies. This has greatly expanded the capacity of the current factories of medical equipaments to gain scalability and national coverage.
According to Franco Palamolla, president of the Brazilian Association of the Industry of Medical and Dental Equipment there are dozens of groups, not only in the industry, but involving biomedical engineering, engineering nucleus, research centers (such as Coppe) looking for other alternatives for rapid development, such as modeling through 3D printers.
The priority is two types of product:
1) The disposable masks and aprons, to protect healthcare professionals. We have to increase brutally. Brazil has productive capacity, but no one can handle the increased demand. At the height of the crisis, China bought our production. Some companies in the area of knitwear industry and clothing are entering in the pool of industries and soon the production will start to skyrocket.
2) Pulmonary respirators. Coronavirus generates severe pneumonia. The patient who has to go to the semi-intensive care, needing to be ventilated. Production requires a lot of mechanical and pneumatic and electronics things - which Brazil has. However, adding efforts, says Franco, it is possible that other sectors will start to make available the pieces necessary for the manufacture of respirators.
This effort has no central coordination, says Franco. There is the relevant work of the Ministry of Health, identifying the demands and signaling the directions to the private sector to act. “The groups are formed. So we put the information to work and get it right with other business sectors ”.
"It is a solidarity effort that I have never seen in Brazil," he says.
It is not an easy challenge. No country has the productive capacity to support the sector's explosive demand, neither the United States nor Europe combined. At the epicenter of the crisis, China had to close exports, domestic capacity was not enough and it even imported products from Brazil. Then it undertook a massive reconversion effort, just like Japan, while Europe and the USA faltered - now they have entered the war.
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