World News | Colombia Turns to Emergency Ventilators to Treat COVID-19
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. The machine called the Heron looks like many other ventilators used to treat COVID-19 patients.
Bogota, Aug 25 (AP) The machine called the Heron looks like many other ventilators used to treat COVID-19 patients.
There's a screen atop a metallic box that displays the amount of oxygen being pumped into a person's lungs and a plastic tube that delivers it to the patient.
But this device costs about $4,000 — a fifth of the price of ventilators imported from China — and it's made in Colombia, where some hospitals have been overwhelmed by coronavirus patients.
Engineers hope the recently begun emergency deployment of the ventilators could save hundreds of lives and make Colombia a pioneer in low-cost equipment for COVID-19 patients.
“It's not just the price that's important” said Julian Echeverry, a mechanical engineering professor at Bogota's La Sabana University who helped to design the Heron, “but how quickly we can get these machines to hospitals.”
The Herons haven't yet received full approval from Colombian regulators, who insist they must first be tested successfully on at least 100 patients.
But a new law allows doctors to use the Herons if their hospital has run out of conventional machines and they have the consent of patients or their relatives.
That situation recently played out at Bogota's Cardioinfantil Foundation, a private clinic whose 55 intensive-care beds have been fully occupied, or close to that, throughout August.
Dr. Fabio Varon, a pneumologist, said he used the Heron this month on a 50-year-old COVID-19 patient with severe lung damage. The hospital had run out of conventional ventilators when the man was carried into the emergency room.
“With his relatives' permission, we hooked up the patient (to a Heron) for three days” Varon said. “The ventilator didn't give us any trouble, and the patient is now recovering.”
Colombia is in a critical stage of the pandemic, with officials recording around 8,000 new cases and 300 deaths each day. The country has reported more than 500,000 cases since the pandemic began, with approximately 3.5% requiring hospitalization in intensive-care units.
President Ivan Duque's administration has created new intensive-care units and purchased more than 6,300 ventilators since April, mostly from China at a cost of about $22,000 each, according to the Health Ministry.
But less than half of those ventilators have arrived and been installed in hospitals, the ministry says, even as the number of people needing them climbs.
In the capital city of Bogota, ICU units are currently 77% full according to the municipal government. In remote regions with fewer hospital beds, the situation is more difficult. ICU occupancy reached 100% in July and August in the jungle states of Choco and Caqueta, forcing hospitals there to fly patients with severe lung damage to faraway cities.
As in other nations facing similar problems, that has set off a race to build local ventilators that are reliable, cost-efficient and can be quickly produced.
The University of La Sabana started work on the Heron in April, with professors from its engineering and medical schools leading the project.
After testing a pilot version on pigs, the university started mass production in July with the help of Challenger, a company that makes washing machines and televisions.
They have built more than 200 ventilators, with a total of 50 units sent to hospitals in Bogota, Choco and the eastern state of Arauca.
Monica Murcia, a projects coordinator at the Colombia Solidaria Foundation, said several local companies have pledged funds to produce 600 more ventilators once they are approved by regulators.
The University of Antioquia, meanwhile, designed a similar low-cost ventilator with the help of a medical supplies company and shipped more than 90 units to hospitals in Medellin, Cartagena and the border state of Norte de Santander.
Those are being assembled by a company that makes dishwashers. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)