The first medical helicopter in Bulgaria arrives this year…
The Ministry of Health has received a final offer for the supply of 6 plus 2 medical helicopters worth BGN 160.5 million, “Sega” reports. The proposal was made by the Italian company Leonardo, which was the only company that submitted a bid a few months ago in the first tender.
The Ministry of Health initially suspended the procedure, but then decided to start direct negotiations with the Italian company.
The price exceeds the estimated value of the order, for which it was financed with European money. The excess will be financed from the national budget. The first helicopter should be delivered by December 1, 2023. This is clear from the company’s offer, which was opened at the end of this week.
From the breakdown it is clear that the company has slightly lost the unit price of 1 helicopter. In the first procedure, which failed for exceeding the estimated price, the company offered 19,804,723 for one helicopter, now the offer has been reduced to BGN 19,617,717.
The ground equipment is offered at this price as the selected offer – BGN 3,535,618.
low resource BGN 135.6 million excluding VAT, which are provided by the European operational program “Regions in Growth” and the National Plan for Recovery and Sustainability
If the Ministry of Health signs a successful contract with the company, the first medical helicopter should be delivered by December 1, 2023. The ground equipment should be available by September 1. The remaining helicopters will be delivered in the period 2024-2026 – two years each.
Currently, Bulgaria is the only country in the low union that does not have medical helicopters, necessary in situations requiring rapid transport of the injured and medical teams from and to hard-to-reach regional or medical supplies of blood, organs, drugs, etc. Currently, military aircraft and helicopters that are not specially adapted for medical purposes are used for these purposes.
In the past month, the increasing number of incidents in the mountains and the need for urgent air transport of patients have brought the stalled HEMS project back into the public eye.
After expectations were created last year that serious work was finally starting on the construction of HEMS, the failures surrounding the procurements of the Ministry of Health and the “Bulgaria Heli Med Service” increased public dissatisfaction and criticism. The topic is also exploited in the political field, where GERB, “We continue the Change” and the caretaker government shift the blame for the failures to each other.