The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H) on Monday asked the central government to consider adopting 'bag valve mask' as an alternative to meet surge in demand for ventilators, both in India and other countries, to treat COVID-19 patients.
While the conventional ventilators are expensive, hard to produce, and not portable, Professor B.S. Murty, Director, IIT Hyderabad highlighted that 'bag valve masks' are small devices, which are used to deliver breathing support in emergency situations that are inexpensive, easy to produce, and portable - which therefore have every quality that is required in this crisis.
They are the most common of these devices is the bag valve mask, often called by the proprietary name of 'Ambu Bag,' that is used for resuscitation in emergency situations.
"Our estimate of the cost is that it can be manufactured for less than Rs 5,000, or one-hundredth the cost of a conventional machine. The cost of manufacturing six million of these devices will be probably less than that of the inadequate number of 60,000 conventional machines mentioned above," said Murty and Professor V Eswaran, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, IIT Hyderabad.
"The cost is so low that it can be considered a single-use device that will be given over to a single patient, and never used again. It needs to be manufactured, however, on an industrial scale, in millions, within a short time of a few months," the professors said.
The professors noted that while 'bag valve mask' are currently hand-powered and therefore not suitable for continuous use as a ventilator, it would be easy to design a similar device powered by an electrical source, which could be a car battery, apart from the conventional power supply.
It could be made portable, and therefore adopted in villages and other areas without a power supply and be inexpensive enough to manufacture in bulk.
It is estimated that there are around 40,000 ventilators in India at present, mostly in the private hospitals, they said.
The professors said that assuming a low six per cent infection rate, in case COVID-19 advancement in India continues, in the Indian population of 1.3 billion, that would mean that around 80 million people would get affected.
Of these 80 million, at least five per cent (4 million patients) would require ventilators. Each of these five million patients would need ventilators for around 21 days, thereby blocking that machine for at least that amount of time.
Further, the machines are not portable and are found only in high-end hospitals in large cities, so patients from villages would need to be transported to these cities.
"We cannot depend on the conventional ventilators for a solution to this crisis," the professors said.
Google sacks 28 employees involved in protests over Israel govt contract
Tech giant Google has laid off 28 employees who were involved in sit-in protests at its offices over a Google contract with the Israeli government.
Congress in Tripura blocks rail stations to protest police fired-killing of 5 farmers in MP
The firing on Tuesday came during raucous protests to demand better crop prices in the drought-ravaged region that saw one farmer suicide every five hours in the past two years.
DMs, SPs of violence-hit MP districts transferred
The farmers agitation entered its eighth day on Thursday. The peasants have been on strike since June 1, demanding loan waiver and fair price for their produce.
Indian American selected among 12 NASA astronaut candidates
He continued on to earn a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School.
World's oldest human species' fossils found in Morocco
The institute said the remains of the Homo sapiens, which were found in a remote village called Jbel Irhoud, date back to over 300,000 years ago, Xinhua reported.
7 killed in blast near Afghan mosque
The explosive device was planted in a motorbike and detonated near the northern gate of the Great Mosque of Herat around 3 p.m., provincial police chief Mohammad Ayub Ansari said.
India's military mules: No road too treacherous
"The dauntless and loyal military mules of the Army Service Corps have enabled last-mile logistics supply in the most inhospitable conditions along our frontiers in all past wars and operations in the highest tradition of the Indian Army."