Thailand eyes to locally produce AEDs by 2018

BANGKOK, December 12 (TNA) - Thailand, in cooperation with a South Korean medical firm, plans to locally produce automated external defibrillators, (AEDs) by 2018 to save the country's foreign exchange reserves by about 9 billion baht annually. Kobchai Sangsitthisawat, Director-General of the Department of Industrial Promotion, under the Thai Ministry of Industry, told journalists on Tuesday that his department has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with South Korea-based Mediana Co., Ltd to conduct a feasibility study on the production of AEDs in Thailand. Under the MOU, Kobchai said, both sides are looking into two approaches of cooperation, the one is that the South Korean medical firm would invest in the production of AEDs in Thailand, whereas the other is that the Thai side would produce AEDs by its own through a high technological transfer by the South Korean company to member business firms of the Medical and Health Device Manufacturers Industry Club of the Federation of Thai Industries (FIT) first, after which the domestic production of AEDs would be expanded to other producers more widely. Kobchai pointed out that the locally-produced AEDs, if successfully sustained, should substitute imported AEDs by 100,000 units over the next five years, saving the country's foreign exchange reserves by up to 9 billion baht. The senior official revealed that his department plans to invite a team of researchers from the Faculty of Engineering of Mahidol University to help develop the locally-produced AEDs, with the first lot of Thailand-made AEDs expected to be introduced by 2018. According to the senior official, the death toll from acute heart attack in Thailand was ranked the third top, after cancer and accidents, and has killed up to about 54,000 people annually. The senior official stressed that all buildings and places in Thailand should, thus, have their AEDs installed to save the life of people in emergency and to reduce the death toll from the acute heart attack nationwide in the future. (TNA)