Mexican families to whom Philips gave ventilators speak

Relatives of patients who died during the COVID-19 pandemic filed a class-action lawsuit in Mexico against Philips for defective ventilators that, according to international alerts, released toxic particles. Jesús and Miriam are two of the plaintiffs who lost a loved one. They now demand justice and reparation, while the Dutch multinational insists that it has made a voluntary withdrawal of the equipment since 2021.

Mexico City, October 22 (However).- When Miriam Vivanco had to hospitalize her father, Gabriel Vivanco López, they repeated to her on the phone that everything was going well, that his health was stable, that the doctors had him under control and even that he would not even have to be hospitalized. However, 10 days later they informed him that he had to be intubated, but that there were no personnel in that hospital to perform the procedure. Miriam had to move him by her own means to the specialty hospital in San José, where they intubated him. After 12 days, Miriam received a call around midnight: her father had died.

Miriam’s father was one of the thousands of patients intubated in 2021, during the second wave of COVID-19when the country’s hospitals were saturated and mechanical ventilators had become the most precious resource. By then, the health alerts issued since 2021 by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), about the deficiencies and risks of these Philips brand devices. In Mexico there were at least 5,500 throughout the country; 2,000 donated by the Dutch company to the Government and 3,500 placed through its then distributor: Healthcare Systems.

Miriam learned years later that some of the ventilators used in Mexican hospitals had manufacturing defects: a foam used to reduce noise degraded and released toxic particles and carcinogenic gases. This information reported in the media, together with the fact that the company had already been sanctioned in other countries, led her to contact the lawyers who are currently leading a class action lawsuit against the Dutch multinational.

Mexican lawyers, led by lawyer Eduardo Fuentes Celestrín, are preparing a series of class actions against the company. The first was presented on October 6, 2025 and brings together 43 direct and indirect victims, of which 27 correspond to relatives of deceased people. However, the lawyers reported that there are already 70 people interested in joining new class actions, and they estimate that 80 percent of the registered cases correspond to deaths attributed to the use of this equipment.

Miriam cannot verify if the ventilator they used with her father was one of those models, but she joined the class action lawsuit because she believes that the company must assume its responsibility “Obviously, as medical personnel, they are not going to go into details or tell you what brand they intubate with. That was already up to the company. Unfortunately we are in a country where corruption reigns. It is unfortunate that they profit from people’s health, the woman said in an interview.

Mr. Gabriel Vivanco, Miriam’s father, fell ill in the second wave of COVID-19 infections, in April 2021. He was first admitted to the La Margarita hospital, in Puebla, and then he was transferred by the IMSS to clinic 6, in Plaza San Pedro. By telephone, the doctors told him that he was not that serious, however, days later they informed him that he had to be intubated.

He remained there between ten and twelve days. “The prognosis was good because it was not getting complicated,” he said. She even offered to bring medication if they needed it, but the doctors told her everything was fine. Until, one night, he received the call confirming his death.

“Everything happened so quickly because due to the pandemic they did not allow you contact with the patient, there was a lot of restriction. In my case it was almost: ‘here we give it to you and go and bury it,’” he said in an interview. The death certificate, the family member highlighted, indicated complications due to COVID and intubation.

Miriam’s story is not isolated.

Jesús Ramírez Solvera also lost his wife, María Teresa Enríquez Salazar, in the first days of 2021, when hospital saturation made it almost impossible to get medical care and when there was already the FDA alert about Philips ventilators: “There were no hospitals, the country’s hospital system was collapsed,” he remembers.

After several days of looking for a place, he managed to admit her to the Ángeles Hospital in the Roma neighborhood on January 12. “He was going very badly, unfortunately he died on January 13, a day later,” he said.

Jesús and Miriam are part of the 43 people who filed the first civil and criminal lawsuit against Philips in Mexico. Although Jesús acknowledged that he never knew what equipment was used to intubate his wife, he did highlight that this is precisely one of the families’ complaints: “when your patient enters the hospital, you no longer know. The last thing you can check is what brand of equipment they are using. You are going to be treated for a health issue, not to check the brands.”

The pandemic ended, according to the WHO, in May 2023. In Mexico, more than 420 thousand people died from COVID and nearly 250 thousand more from indirect causes, related to the priority care of sick patients, according to data from the Ministry of Health from 2022.

The stories of Jesús and Miriam share, like thousands, the pain of having lost a loved one during the Covid pandemic, but also, in their case, they also share the same demand: justice and reparation.

None of them can say with certainty that the equipment used with their relatives was from Philips. But both know that their pain is part of a larger pattern, one of inequality in the response to a shared tragedy.

“I stayed with two girls, 8 and 9 years old. Today they are 13 and 14. It is a situation that changes your life completely, something with which one learns to live. But it is also something for which we ask for justice. That a precedent is set, that this does not happen again,” Jesús highlighted.

“These are losses that you don’t expect. In other words, the fact that you hospitalize someone means that they are going to try to help them move forward, so that their health evolves, not the other way around,” Miriam added.

The class action lawsuit, in which Jesús and Miriam participate, was filed in federal courts and before the Attorney General’s Office and its argument is based on health alerts issued since 2021 by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which discovered that the PE-PUR polyurethane foam used to reduce noise in fans degraded over time, releasing toxic particles and gases. carcinogens that could be inhaled by patients.

Alejandro Rojas, lawyer representing the class action, accused that Philips since 2021 already had full knowledge of various effects of these respirators and did nothing. “They continued to be used in public hospitals, in private hospitals. Here we have people who went to multiple hospitals in the public sector, military, private, throughout the country and did not even have the information at the time of being treated that those respirators had defects and that is something that we consider should be repaired,” he said in an interview.

The lawyer indicated that the main people affected in Mexico and who are seeking to be included in this lawsuit are users from different regions of the country, and even people who reside in the United States but were treated in Mexican hospitals during the pandemic.

“Here it is not only about repairing the damages of the relatives who died, it is also about compensating the people who depended financially on the victims,” he added.

Likewise, he highlighted that the lawsuit seeks comprehensive reparation for the damage in accordance with the provisions of the General Victims Law. “They are measures of restitution, rehabilitation, compensation, satisfaction and non-repetition. That is what is being requested from Philips México,” he explained.

For his part, Jesús – who lost his wife – insists that what they are demanding is not something extraordinary. “In the United States, Canada and Europe, Philips has already paid for the damage caused by these equipment. So, why not in our country? They dealt with the health of many people. And although they have donated it, that does not exempt them from responsibility,” he pointed out.

Last September, the Philips company issued a statement in which it claimed to be carrying out a voluntary recall of its E30 model fans, although it attributed the lack of complete compliance to factors beyond its control.

“Since 2021, Philips has worked closely with COFEPRIS, hospitals and distributors to ensure these E30 units are removed safely; however, we do not control hospital inventory decisions, so we have consistently urged healthcare providers to follow guidance on discontinuing their use and disposing of the machines,” the company said in its statement.

Following the announcement of the new class action lawsuit, COFEPRIS itself issued a bulletin on October 10 in which it requested hospitals and distribution centers to immobilize and segregate the Philips E30 ventilators that still remain in their facilities, in addition to asking suppliers to proceed with their removal.