Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC), a top regulator of engineering services, has allowed the testing of domestically produced ventilators to help provide treatment to the COVID 19 patients as the life-saving equipment faces worldwide shortages.
A special team has been formed by the Ministry of National Health Services to evaluate the testing procedure, according to the Council amid coronavirus outbreak that has exposed Pakistan’s woeful lack of medical facilities and equipment.
Pakistan currently possesses a limited number of ventilators and has been importing the expensive equipment costing as much as $30,000 each amid the coronavirus epidemic.
These locally manufactured ventilators are expected to bring relief for the government and the health sector as they will be available at much less cost than the imported items – around $2000 each.
The testing procedures of these machines will be evaluated every six months, if required.
“The whole process is being fast-tracked to meet the emergency requirement of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the document added.
Pakistan presently has around 3000 ventilators in hospitals and medical facilities throughout the country. Of these, about one third are out of order. The Ministry of Defense Production has been trying to fix the ventilators on on an urgent basis as the country faces soaring number of COVID-19 cases.
Pakistan Association of Auto Parts Manufacturers (PAAPAM) , the umbrella body of autoparts fabricators, has expressed hoped that the design of the state-of-art ventilators would be given final touches and presented to the PEC and Engineering Development Board ( EDB) by April 14, Tuesday.
“We have conducted reverse engineering of a US-made ventilator. That has been in use at the major hospitals of North America and Europe over the last 15 years,” Engineer Razzaq Gohar, the head of the group working on the development of ventilator said.
Minister for Science and Technology, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain says Pakistan Engineering Council had received 48 design of ventilators.
Three of these designs have been forwarded to Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for approval.
The trial of endogenously made ventilators would be conducted in public sector hospitals, Fawad Chaudhary said.
“I am so proud of the initiatives of Pakistani engineers, technicians and scientists, who are going to make this task successful within a week,“ he said.
