A team of five students in Afghanistan has the brilliant idea of producing ventilators using Toyota parts. They use easily accessible parts such as the engine of a Toyota Corolla.
The team called Afghan Dreamers consists of young Afghan girls aged 14 to 17. They are part of a larger initiative by Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob to empower girls across the country.
Program participants are selected from all over Afghanistan based on their grade 9 and 10 degree exams. Then they are nominated for the Dreamers program and even for the Afghan Girls Robotics Tea, representing the country in international competitions.
During the program, the girls get everything they need to solve technical problems and represent their country around the world. The special team working on this project includes Somaya Faruqi, Dyana Wahbzadeh, Folernace Poya, Ellaham Mansori and Nahid Rahimi.
They worked on two prototypes, one of which resembles the cheap design of the MIT ventilators and uses the other parts of a Toyota Corolla.
The latter uses the battery and engine for one of the best-selling cars in the world, the Corolla, which means that the parts needed to make this fan are available worldwide. The team is currently optimizing the devices and working with doctors to test them
What is MIT Ventilator?
One of the most important tools in the fight against the new coronavirus is the ventilator, which allows people with severe COVID-19 cases to breathe when the going gets tough.
Unfortunately, it's very expensive medical technology (each device can cost around $ 30,000), meaning ventilators missing out on many parts of the world.
To solve this problem, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) is working hard to develop a low-cost ventilator that can save thousands of lives in light of the current global COVID-19 epidemic. It consists of MIT students and professors who consult with local doctors to create a simple design that can be mass-produced with ease.
The MIT E-Vent (Emergency Respiratory Team) has been operating continuously since its inception on March 12, and will make designs available to the public so that inexpensive ventilators can be manufactured and distributed to those who need them. So far, the ventilator has been made from components worth approximately $ 100, which significantly undermines traditional hospital ventilators.
The most important part of this simple ventilator is called a pocket ventilator ambu bag. Basically, it is a plastic bag that helps patients breathe by compressing and decompressing the bag by hand. This may seem simple, but operating the Ambu bag requires skill and patience to adapt the pump's timing and pressure to the situation.
Of course, a healthcare provider should not be expected to sit with a patient and operate the Ambu bag indefinitely. That is why the E-Vent team has developed a mechanism to operate them automatically. They even published their construction process on paper, but are now focusing on refining the design.
Factors such as durability, accuracy and attitude should be considered very carefully in such a project. That is why the team is again working intensively to make the design as robust as possible.
