Representational picture. PHOTO: EXPRESS
As hospitals battle to deal with a scarcity of life-saving ventilators to deal with coronavirus sufferers, a bunch of volunteers from Portugal launched on Tuesday night a novel platform hoping to deliver outdated, unused medical gear again to life.
On the net platform Vent2Life, Portuguese hospitals can create free accounts and report malfunctioning gear saved at their amenities. The platform will then hyperlink the hospital with a talented technician who can repair the issue.
“It is ready to connect hospitals and health centers with technicians and engineers to repair ventilators,” the mastermind behind the initiative, Joao Nascimento, a Portuguese entrepreneur who research at Harvard College, wrote on Twitter moments after the platform went stay.
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Tons of of individuals preferred the tweet, and plenty of replied thanking Nascimento and the volunteers for his or her work. “These are the acts the country needs,” one Twitter person mentioned.
The platform, which took 10 days to place collectively by a group of software program builders and designers, hopes to assist restore not less than 200 broken or inactive ventilators presently saved at Portuguese hospitals unfold throughout the nation.
For now the platform can solely be utilized by Portuguese hospitals, however Nascimento advised Reuters it’s going to quickly be accessible in different international locations, too.
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The quickly spreading outbreak, which has killed greater than 17,000 folks globally, is placing healthcare techniques around the globe in a good spot and there’s a scarcity of ventilators wanted to deal with coronavirus sufferers.
Although Portugal, which declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, has solely reported 2,362 coronavirus instances and 33 deaths, far fewer than in hard-hit Italy and Spain, the nation’s well being system is already below mounting strain.
In an interview with TVI tv on Monday, Prime Minister Antonio Costa mentioned the nation’s public hospitals have 1,142 ventilators and personal hospitals have an extra 250.
To sort out the disaster, the federal government already purchased 500 ventilators from China. Non-public firms, such because the nation’s greatest utility, EDP, are additionally donating ventilators.
Nascimento mentioned he hopes the damaged ventilators could be working forward of April 14, when the coronavirus epidemic is anticipated to peak in Portugal, in line with Well being Minister Marta Temido.
The platform has been backed by a number of firms and universities, together with Portuguese medical faculties.
