Department of Science and Technology to manufacture automated Ventilators

On April 2, 2020 the Department of Science and Technology toed up with the Wipro 3D to jointly build proto type of automated ventilators.

Highlights

The ventilators will help in meeting urgent requirement of Covid-19 crisis. The ventilators are called AMBU (Artificial Manual Breathing Unit). They are hand held devices that will provide automatic pressurized ventilation to the patients that are not breathing or facing extreme difficulties in breathing

What is the plan?

Currently, there are only 40,000 ventilators in India. And India is importing ventilators mainly from Switzerland. In order to address the issue, several step are being taken by the GoI to promote organizations to manufacture ventilators in the country. The AMBU is one such initiative. The ventilator design uses readily available components and hence is easy to build

Benefits

The AMBU is portable and hence will be ideal to suit the temporary hospital beds set up in railway coaches. It has provisions to add PEEP (positive end expiratory pressure) as an extra component in order to maintain pressure.

The design minimizes the need of a support person in the room. This also helps to keep the heath care personnel safe.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2020