Covid-19: Poly cobbles up Nigeria’s first ventilator, braces up for mass production

In about a week of trial and error, the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun, claim it has produced a ventilator, a piece of medical equipment the world now run to manage Covid-19 complication.

Rector of the Institution, Olusegun Aluko, said  on Television Continental on Thursday 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.

“ 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.”

He added that the polytechnic will train other members of staff of institutions across the country–for mass production.

Describing 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,” he said.

A ventilator sells for over N1 million, and Nigeria had to rely on donation and foreign aid to acquire those the Covid-19 Task Force depends on now.