Ukraine’s army has critically low provision of medical supplies, low-quality tourniquets – Union of Paramedics

He said this on the Espreso TV channel.

"Our army is provided with medical equipment by a maximum of 5 percent, it used to be so. Over the past couple of months, things have deteriorated. All the initiatives to check the tourniquets to make sure there were no Chinese tourniquets ended up with chief medical officers being severely reprimanded. They were forced to keep silent and write that the entire combat staff had American tourniquets. We have 5% of normal tourniquets, and the rest are some kind of private entrepreneurs, including Chinese ones, which do not work. And because of this, our soldiers are dying," emphasized Vus. 

According to the head of the All-Ukrainian Union of Paramedics, 160 types of tourniquets are produced in Ukraine, but only 2 are proper.

"Sich and Dnipro are the only two Ukrainian tourniquets that work. Unfortunately, our army has 158 of these bad tourniquets. For each wounded soldier, up to 8 tourniquets are used per day. About 1000 tourniquets are used at the front every day. And we need a huge amount of them.  Also, a large number of products for wound tamponade, pneumothorax, etc. are needed. What are these excuses from the Defense Ministry for? If the people who are involved in the war know that we are provided with 0%, not 100%," emphasized Vus.

• On August 28, volunteer Oksana Korchynska reported that the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee failed to conduct an inspection and official testing of tourniquets in the army.

• 95% of the Ukrainian soldiers are supplied with low-quality tourniquets. If a soldier is injured and uses a low-quality tourniquet, he will die - Yaroslav Vus, head of the All-Ukrainian Union of Paramedics, told Espreso.