27th April 2021 12:02 am 26th April 2021 3:50 pm
Efforts to relieve a surge in COVID-19 cases in India will see 100 non-invasive breathing aids sent to the country as part of the UK government’s shipment of emergency supplies.
Image: UCL
The UCL-Ventura breathing aid is part of over 600 devices including ventilators and oxygen concentrators being sent to India, which recorded over 350,000 new cases on April 26, 2021.
According to the Foreign Office, nine airline container loads of supplies, including 495 oxygen concentrators, 120 non-invasive ventilators and 20 manual ventilators, will be sent to India this week.
In a statement, Professor Rebecca Shipley, UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering, said: “I’m immensely proud of the UCL-Ventura team and indebted to our logistics partner, G-TEM, who after receiving the call on Saturday morning, arranged for the shipment to be sent with the government’s emergency supplies to India’s worst hit areas.
Low-cost breathing aids developed by Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, University College London and University College London Hospital have been shipped to hospitals around the world in a life-saving partnership.
CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) devices were used in the first COVID-19 outbreaks to keep patients off invasive ventilators in China and Italy, but they were in short supply in the UK – and difficult to mass manufacture cheaply and quickly.
It took just 100 hours from the first meeting, between Mercedes HPP engineers, and clinicians from UCL and UCLH, to produce the first UCL-Ventura CPAP device ahead of the 2020 season, with Mercedes’ Brixworth factory repurposed to manufacture them.
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