Ventilators are very important tool right now to prolong the life of severe cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) patients as the crisis continue to accelerate.
Photo grabbed: GMA News / YouTube
Hardware experts, engineers and scientists around the world are hearing the call of duty to help their country and save life.
A team of innovators in the Philippines led by mechanical engineer Arcelio Fetizana Jr. is responding to the challenge. According to him due to the difficulty of importing parts for the ventilators, his team are now developing a low-cost automated bag valve mask or known as ambu bags that can potentially help address the emergency demand.
In an interview with Atom Araullo, he said that they came-up with the idea of converting manual resuscitator or a BVM into a electronically operated device. This will help nurses limit their self to exposure and free them from danger of contracting the virus as it work automatically.
Using the available materials that they could use, the team has built a prototype with robotic arm that served as the based which automatically squeezes the bag.
If given the green light from the concerned government agencies, fetizanan said they plan to provide automated BVM to hospitals attending to COVID-19 patients.
Technically the manual resuscitator is a hand-held device commonly used to provide positive pressure ventilation to patients who are not breathing or not breathing adequately.
There are not enough ventilators available in hospitals right now for all of the potential patients who will be struck by the virus.
As of this posting April 2, the Department of Health has reported 322 new cases of COVID-19, which raised the total to 2,633. There are 51 recoveries so far and 107 deaths.
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