IIT Hyderabad professors urge to adopt substitutes of ventilators

Prof BS Murthy, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad Director, has urged the Government of India to think of implementing 'bag valve mask' as a substitute to meet an increase in demand for ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients. According to Prof Murthy and Prof V Eswaran, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of IIT Hyderabad, 'bag valve masks' are small devices implemented to deliver breathing support in emergency situations that are low-priced, easy to produce, and moveable. Therefore, they have every quality that is required in this catastrophe. According to a statement from the institute, a bag valve mask is often named Ambu Bag. It is used for resuscitation in emergency situations.

Out of the 15 per cent of COVID-19 affected patients who may require hospitalisation, approximately one-third (5 per cent) would probably attain respiratory difficulties for which ventilators for aided breathing will get necessary. The IIT Hyderabad professors informed that 'bag valve mask' is presently hand-powered and therefore not appropriate for continuous use as a ventilator. It would be easy to develop a similar device powered by an electrical source. This could be a car battery apart from the conventional power supply. 

It could be made convenient and therefore implemented in villages and other areas without a power supply. It will be reasonable enough to manufacture in bulk. In the last few weeks, many countries have introduced this idea of production of low-cost ventilators and have even commenced competitions where the winning design would be announced open-source, which are not patented, and can be provided free for anyone to adopt. Various designs are already available for 3-D printing and so can be manufactured on a small scale on a 3-D printer.

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