The Covid-19 health emergency has taken healthcare systems around the world by surprise, highlighting a severe shortage of those medical products necessary to deal with the emergency.

The high demand for FFP2 and FFP3 masks, surgical masks, vinyl gloves, nitrile gloves, gowns, gels and sanitizing cleaners, as well as many other products, concentrated in a very short time frame has created major critical issues, exhausting local supplies and creating a dependence on the Far East.

Furthermore, supplies from outside the European community are not always of high quality, and often, even if of excellent quality, they are not provided with the necessary EU certifications and in particular those required for distribution in Italy.

To complicate this already complex scenario are the added restrictive measures and new standards imposed for production in the main exporting countries, the critical issues facing international transport and local logistical problems.

All these issues combined have generated an explosion in prices and the consequent proliferation of speculators and improvised operators, who offer low-quality products without certification.