COVID-19: Federal Polytechnic Ilaro develops ventilator | EduCeleb
EduCeleb
16th April 2020
Engineers at the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro in Ogun State, Nigeria have manufactured a ventilator using locally sourced materials.
A ventilator is an equipment that aids persons with breathing difficulty and is essential for such patients affected by Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).
Rector of the institution, Olusegun Aluko disclosed that it took the team seven days to produce the widely sought medical equipment.
In a report broadcast by Television Continental on Thursday, he said as the global demand for ventilator rises amid the coronavirus pandemic, he engaged the engineers alongside some medical doctors in the institution to find a solution to the shortage of ventilators in the country.
He explained that after days of hard work, the team was able to design a functional ventilator with less than one million naira.
In his words, “It took us one week through trial and error. Now, there is no trial again. All the information that we used are documented. All we just need to do now is to feed them into the system, start mass producing and coupling them.
“If we can produce this one within one week, with all the research, that means in a matter of two days we should be able to produce one.”
He added that the institution has the wherewithal to train other members of staff of institutions across the country.
This, he believed, would help to expand the scope of mass production of ventilators in Nigeria.
Describing how the equipment works, an electrical engineer and member of the team, Oloyede Olukayode said, “The system is an electro-mechanical device that uses electronic components because of its complexity.
“We have different voltages working for different parts of the system. We have the electric motor and we have the display and we have the device through which we get air or oxygen into the patient.”
According to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Nigeria has recorded that over 400 coronavirus cases in Nigeria.
Like the Ilaro polytechnic, the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi also developed a ventilator penultimate week.
Other institutions such as the University of Ilorin, the University of Lagos and the University of Benin also produced hand sanitisers in response to the pandemic.
This is as the Abia State University, Uturu developed a COVID-19 tracking system.