COVID-19: FG launches locally-made ventilators, disinfectants in Abuja

To fight the Coronavirus pandemic  ravaging the world, the Federal Government has inaugurated made in Nigeria ventilator.

It also opened disinfectant tunnels and doorways that will  be placed at the entrance of public institutions, schools and malls that are produced with censors.

The doors would  sprays disinfectants on people walking through the tunnels.

Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mohammed Abdullahi, who inaugurated the equipment yesterday in Abuja, said that an agency under the Ministry, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) produced the equipment in an answer to Mr President’s call to find a solution to handling the pandemic.

He said that the government will make NASENI produce the ventilators and disinfectants in large quantities for distribution to different parts of the country to curb the spread of the virus.

His words: “This product can beat other inventions that we have seen outside the country, I am very impressed with NASENI because this can greatly improve the public health safety of the country, on behalf of NASENI we are going to ensure that the Federal Government adopts this for our various institutions, public schools, shopping malls etc to ensure that people that walk into such facilities are properly disinfected to guard against further speed of COVID-19.

“We are here to answer the clarion call of Mr President to see how we can use our own technology, engineers and scientists to develop equipment that will assist the country in containing the spread of COVID-19 and other upcoming health challenges in the country. The invention of these ventilators will assist Nigeria in no small way to contain the virus that is plaguing all nations.

“We are going to interface with the relevant agencies and ministries to ensure that NASENI is empowered to manufacture this in large quantities for distribution. I hope that states in the country will take advantage of this and place  their procurement orders because as it is now, NASENI is going to be under tremendous pressure to produce as much as they can so as it is, it is going be on first come, first serve basis. On our part we are going to lias with the appropriate COVID-19 committee domicile in the SGF office, CBN and NNPC to ensure that adequate funding is provided to encourage this initiative.”

Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NASENI Prof Mohammed Haruna explained that the agency using the World Health Organization model produced a reversed engineering model of ventilators in accordance with the materials they have available.

He said that the agency has ten different centres all over the country, with state of the art manufacturing capabilities to produce the different parts and it can begin mass producing ventilators and indisinfectants which can be ready for use in ten days when funds are provided for them.

He said:”It is a mobile ventilator sick people can receive oxygen and be revived outside the hospital, we have two models, one is the same type with the model from the World Health Organisation that requires a type of oxygen tank it is in the absence of the small tank that can be hung to move around with that we made our own model.

“We also have the design for two other automated ventilators that monitors the patients conditions including the online display of the heartbeat rate and other responses.

“With the closure of boarders due to the pandemic and the need in the country, we had to look inward within our capacity, every product was designed afresh, we camped our scientists since the inception of the lockdown for nine days in a camp in one of our institutes in Minna to share ideas on designs and models needed and we produced what is practicable within the constraints.

“We have a group in NASENI doing reverse engineering of the models of ventilators presented by the WHO, its electronic model was produced by another team that was camped in our centre in Okene so everything is our design and it will be patented. So far we have spent about N27m to produce the different prototypes in terms of materials.

“NASENI has many research and development centers about 10 across the country, each of these centres has advance manufacturing capabilities and machines, as soon as we get funding, I can assure you that different parts will be mass produced in different centres and thousands will be made available provided funding is provided and many products can be ready within ten days.

“The tunnels are produced with polycabinet based materials, they are not wood and the cover is made with materials that will not absurd rays of light but reflect because of the safety, each tunnel has censors,  that it automatically senses a person coming in and it sprays.” (The Nation)