The dead silence of tomographs: how billions of budget funds hang between warehouses and reports
During 2023-2024, Ukrainian budgetary institutions purchased 62 tomographs, the total cost of which amounted to UAH 2.33 billion, according to information from the Prozorro platform. They were supposed to be installed in hospitals throughout the country to save the lives of civilians, soldiers and the wounded. However, much of this equipment has never seen patients, is stored in warehouses, sits in empty rooms without electricity, or waits for permits that no one is in a hurry to get. In some cases, the devices are not even unpacked, although the money has long been spent on them. Every day, Ukrainians are witnessing how it is possible to buy equipment for billions of hryvnias, but not provide a single inspection, and how not only money but also human lives are drowned in this irresponsibility.
The budget was mastered, but the diagnosis failed
Every day we see many posts where volunteers are trying to raise funds for CT scanners for the country’s medical facilities. Every day, the need for such devices increases due to the increase in the number of wounded. And here there are data that simply drive one into a stupor: budgetary institutions purchased 62 tomographs worth UAH 2.33 billion, but at least 16 of them have not yet been put into operation. Only 35 devices are actually working and one more is in test mode.
The problem is not a lack of equipment, but deep-rooted management miscalculations: the premises are not ready, permits are not issued, repairs drag on for years. And this is not just dry statistics, but a diagnosis of the entire system. All this is happening against the background of constant statements by officials about reforms, modernization and care for medicine. However, behind every unprepared office there are lost days of life, and behind every failed start-up – a real patient who was not diagnosed due to the excess of indifference of public officials who should have carried out proper control and brought the matter to an end.
The fact that budget billions are turned not into medical aid, but into dead metal has long ceased to be an abstraction in Ukraine. Such cases have very specific addresses, dates, purchases and names. As a result, we have a lot of equipment without access to it. Everything rests on chronic irresponsibility, usual bureaucracy and this is how it looks in practice. For example, in Yarmolynetskaya hospitals the repair is completed, the radiologist has already been hired, the facility is officially put into operation, but the tomograph has not yet been put into operation because the license has not been amended. In Samarivska Central Hospital situation almost like a mirror: the equipment was installed back in the fall, everything is technically ready, but it cannot be turned on without permission from DİYAR. In the military unit, CT was installed back in April, but there is nowhere to connect it, because there is still no electricity supply in the premises, since funds were never found to complete the repairs.
In Kyiv, the State Emergency Service bought it tomograph as early as 2023, but the premises are still not ready. In response, the management issues general formulations about “carrying out appropriate work” and reasons that no one has any influence on. In the relocated hospital from Severodonetsk apparatus there is, but the repair is going sluggishly, without deadlines and specifics.
Lysychansk multidisciplinary hospital gave almost UAH 20 million for a new tomograph. It was delivered last year in December. The premises do not meet the requirements, there is no license, the equipment is not installed. The device was supposed to work in preparation for the de-occupation of the region, but it is still idle. The money was spent, but the result was zero. This tomographer never saw a single patient. At the same time, while the equipment gathers dust, the warranty period expires. Equipment that should save lives is aging before it has even been turned on.
In the warehouse, in disassembled form, there is medical equipment equipment worth 39 million hryvnias. purchased back in 2023 at the Obukhov multidisciplinary intensive care hospital. The tomograph never reached the patients. Wasn’t installed and didn’t go through any startup. In February 2025, experts of the State Audit Service confirmed that the device was not just put into operation, it was not even assembled. And if this example already sounds like a typical plot for an absurd comedy, then the ending is even worse, because the warranty period for servicing and repairing the equipment ended in April. That is, now the hospital has expensive, complex and, in fact, no longer new equipment without any warranty protection. The tomograph, which was supposed to work every day, to help diagnose strokes, tumors, injuries, brought nothing but losses and another example of how budget millions disappear in reports and warehouses.
There is a tomograph in the A-1028 military unit, but it is of no use. Equipment purchased at the beginning of 2024, Artek Medical Group LLC brought him in May of the same year. It would seem that everything is moving quickly, but for almost a year the tomograph was idle. Only at the end of April 2025, it was finally mounted in a special room. And here the story breaks off in half: the device is there, but electricity is still missing. Although the office has been renovated, the building is halfway between “started” and “almost finished”. The works started back in 2023, but it seems that they will not reach the finish line even in this case. Like everywhere else in this story, everything was bought, paid for, brought in, but it doesn’t work.
In Drohobych, a city with a population of about 70,000, there has been a pile of metal that should have saved lives for almost three years. In 2022, local hospital #1 decided buy magnetic resonance imaging is necessary for the diagnosis of serious diseases. The city council immediately allocated over UAH 49 million for this, the tender was conducted quickly, and the Kyiv company “Medservicegroup” won. According to the agreement, the equipment was supposed to be operational by the end of 2022. But in May 2025, the tomograph was never started in the hospital. It turned out that the room for installation is not ready, there is not enough electricity, repairs or even basic preparation take years and barely reach 35-40%. The deputy general director of the hospital, who should be monitoring this, throws up her hands, saying that a new agreement with energy suppliers was concluded only recently, the repair documentation is mentioned as an achievement, and the tender for the reconstruction of the premises was announced only in May 2025, that is, a year and a half after the purchase of the tomograph.
The contract itself was concluded in November 2022, and in March 2023, the hospital management signed the act of acceptance and transfer and paid the entire amount. That is, the money went, and the device was left gathering dust in a warehouse in Kyiv, which, by the way, was known for a long time, but the information became public only after the intervention of the deputy commission in February 2025. The commission came to check, but instead of a tomograph, they saw only sealed boxes, which were immediately moved to another room away from the hospital. The representatives of the supplier company do not get in touch. The hospital refuses to show either the tomograph itself or the premises where it is planned to be installed. However, there is a private clinic next to the hospital that has been renting a separate room for a long time and provides MRI services, albeit at exorbitant prices for most patients (from UAH 1,300 to UAH 11,600 per examination).
It was this building that was previously prepared for a tomograph, but they refused to install a low-cost MRI here, saying it was “inconvenient for doctors and patients.” Although it is only about 30 meters from the hospital administration. As a result, science fiction in the form of an MRI, bought with budget money, actually turned into expensive scrap metal that has been sitting in warehouses for years, waiting for someone to finally remember it. This story aroused suspicion in the police, so a pre-trial investigation was opened into the fact of possible embezzlement of state funds in large quantities. Meanwhile, Drohobych hospital patients are forced to go to private clinics and pay for what could be free and available in the state hospital.
In such situations, there is only one certainty that the money has been spent, but the tomographs are not working. A system where tenders are won and money is written off, but there is no real result, not only reduces the quality of medical care, but directly deprives people of the chance for diagnosis and treatment. Purchases are carried out without preparation, while the premises of hospitals are not at all prepared for the installation of devices, and permission documents are simply stuck somewhere in the bureaucratic process. Formally, everything looks like a step forward: reports have been filled out, tenders have been held, funds have been used. However, medical care has not become more accessible. Responsibility is blurred between the Ministry of Health, hospitals, local authorities and inspections. Everyone signs off with a piece of paper, and as a result we have a situation where the device is not installed and the system itself does not work. When doctors can’t perform an examination, it doesn’t help patients to have a brand-new CT scan somewhere in the hospital basement. Everything that should have been saved has turned into dead metal, weathering public money into concrete and bureaucracy.
Here is an example of how the responsibility for the basic elements of medical care is transferred not to the state, but to the community, the local budget and volunteers. In May 2025, the only CT scanner in the front-line Kharkiv military hospital failed. Doctors warned about this back in January, when they started collecting funds for a new device, realizing that the device works continuously, under a critical load, and the resource is running out. It was used to diagnose every fourth patient — that is, for a large number of wounded people, to whom effective treatment cannot be prescribed without an accurate examination.
At the time of the breakdown, only 5% of those who really needed it were able to pass the examination, the rest were left without this key stage in the treatment. But instead of a quick centralized reaction from the Ministry of Health, the Department of Defense or any state fund, the insufficient amount had to be covered from the budget of the city of Kharkiv, which joined the collection after the public initiative was launched.
This case shows not just a failure in coordination, but the lack of a state mechanism for prompt response to the breakdown of critical equipment in military hospitals that receive wounded from the front. And at the same time – about the presence of a real mechanism on the ground: when volunteers start collecting, and the community and city authorities close the hole in silence from the central budget.
The military hospital in the front-line city, where the apparatus is vital to the military and civilians who suffer from shelling almost every day, had to collect 30 million hryvnias. Kharkiv added 15 million hryvnias to the fees from the city budget. This is an example of someone who today really provides critical medicine in war conditions.
How tenders turn budget money into criminal profits
When stories that look more like a farce happen to dozens of tomographers who were supposed to work in hospitals, a logical question arises: where does the money really go and why does the equipment stand idle, and repairs and documents drag on for years? The answer lies partly in the deeper problems of the system, where budget funds do not reach real medicine, but become a source for criminal schemes.
Yes, it was in June 2025 in Ukraine exposed a large-scale corruption scheme of appropriation of budget funds during the procurement of medical equipment for the National Cancer Institute. The amount is impressive, because it is more than UAH 231 million, which disappeared due to an organized group of people. Businessmen, together with some officials of the institute, created an imitation of fair tenders, inflated prices by 50%, falsified documents and rejected real competitors. As a result, public money did not go to the treatment of patients, but ended up in someone’s pockets.
This case is not isolated, but it vividly illustrates that even when funds are allocated, even when equipment is purchased, the real needs of the people can be overlooked. Formal market checks and “required” victories of controlled companies have long been integrated into well-established schemes. Such a “business” for the sick actually deprives budget money of real meaning. The procurement system becomes an instrument not of treatment, but of embezzlement. And while “Medservicegroup” and similar firms make money from price increases and fake tenders, millions of hryvnias simply disappear, and this does not help patients in any way. Those responsible for this crime are already under suspicion under several articles of the Criminal Code, but the real victim here is society, which is still waiting for a high-quality medical diagnosis. Because without transparent control and responsibility, every purchase risks repeating this scenario: the equipment was bought, the money was withdrawn, and the patients are still left without help.
Without delays and bureaucracy: examples of effective implementation of tomographs
However, there are examples when everything works as it should work everywhere, that is, without delay, with preparation and with a real result. In the Khmelnytskyi Regional Hospital and the Institute of Cardiology, Clinical and Regenerative Medicine named after Academician Strazhesk in Kyiv, magnetic resonance imaging machines were put into operation less than a month after delivery.
The computerized tomograph, which was installed in the Territorial Medical Association of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Chernihiv region, started working in 11 days. The premises were prepared for this in advance, so there was no need to wait for repairs or permit procedures. DYAR issued the permit quickly – the institution was recognized as a priority because it receives a large number of wounded.
Krasnokutsk Central District Hospital of Kharkiv Region started carry out the survey in December 2023. Here, the doctors also acted in advance, because the documents and permits were ready in advance, so the launch did not drag on for months or years. These stories prove that if you plan and coordinate actions and don’t sabotage the process at every stage, a tomograph can turn from an expensive cargo in the basement into a real tool that saves people every day.
In the period of a full-scale war, tomographs are important as a key tool for saving lives, it is these devices that make it possible to timely diagnose injuries, hemorrhages, and shrapnel injuries that military and civilians receive every day in front-line and rear hospitals. However, a large part of this equipment never sees a single patient. Lack of preparation, delayed repairs, chaos in documents, and sometimes signs of corruption turn devices into expensive scrap that ages in warehouses or in unheated rooms. The medical reform reported by the officials loses its meaning when a wounded fighter or a civilian injured by shelling is forced to travel hundreds of kilometers to a private clinic, because the “state” CT is available, but does not work. It is obvious that the essence of the problem does not lie in isolated errors of the Ministry of Health, but in a systemic problem, therefore everyone involved in it should bear responsibility for it.
