Federal Polytechnic Ilaro in Ogun State, Nigeria, said on Thursday that it has manufactured a ventilator using local materials.
FEDPOLY Rector, Olusegun Aluko, said it took the team seven days to produce the widely sought medical equipment.
Aluko, who spoke on Television Continental, said as the global demand for ventilator rises amid the coronavirus pandemic, he tasked a team of professionals, including doctors and engineers 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.
According to him, “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.”
The rector said that the institution had the wherewithal to train other members of staff of institutions across the country to expand the scope of mass production of ventilators in Nigeria.
Explaining 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.”
Nigeria currently has over 400 coronavirus cases and the availability of functional ventilators is indispensable in the treatment of the patients.
