In April, at the dawn of the coronavirus pandemic, Vasyl Mazurin, an entrepreneur from Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine, approached city doctors with an offer to help repair equipment to aid patients with COVID-19. Medical staff took him up on the offer and gave him five old, non-functioning medical ventilators to refurbish.

“We’d seen these ventilators only on the TV news,” said Mazurin. “But here at Kontact, we have production facilities, designers, and modern equipment with computerized numerical control up to the task. We had never before repaired medical equipment, but we wanted to help.”

Kontact LLC is a natural gas equipment manufacturer that has received support from USAID’s Economic Resilience Activity (ERA) on its business strategy and the development of international partners and foreign markets. As the company started repairing ventilators, USAID identified technical and business experts in Kyiv and Lviv, to assist Kontact to fully understand the ventilator repair and production processes.

Kontact repaired the five ventilators and returned them to the local hospitals. The company didn’t charge for its work, considering it a contribution to combatting the pandemic.

“Doctors have tested the equipment, and confirmed that all the ventilators are operational,” said Mazurin. “They had exhausted their capacity long ago, but my employees managed to bring the equipment back to life.”

Kontact is now developing its own medical ventilators, with USAID ERA providing consultative support.

“I know we’ll be successful,” Vasyl confidently noted.