Walton ventilators tripped for clinical trials today
Bangladesh is inching towards a significant breakthrough in its fight the coronavirus pandemic, as the Usage of Information programme beneath the government's ICT division has so far received 19 prototypes of ventilators produced by different organisations and people.
After scrutiny, the ventilators will be paid to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) for clinical trials, said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for the ICT division, at a virtual press conference yesterday.
At the press conference, Palak received prototypes of three ventilators manufactured by local tech giant Walton. Their clinical trial is expected to start out today.
Bangladesh has only one 1,250 ventilators, which gets control your body's breathing process when coronavirus infection causes the lungs to fail. And if the pandemic spreads further, the united states with more than 16 crore population will need at least 25,000 ventilators, said an official of an exclusive hospital.
"Our main target is to be self-sufficient in manufacturing technological equipment within a short while and I really believe the response we have received up to now regarding ventilators is tremendous."
Even a few years back Bangladesh had just a few technology companies but now at least nine businesses have popped up riding on the policy support the federal government has provided to the sector.
Palak also praised Walton, which is making the ventilators using the patent and design of Medtronic, an Ireland-based medical device company run by an iconic Bangladeshi expatriate Omar Ishrak.
Of the three types of ventilators Walton is putting up for trials, two were developed which consists of own technology, officials said.
Another local company named Minister is also making ventilators as the Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), an engineering university run by the Bangladesh MILITARY, has also joined the fray.
Palak said the WPB560 style of the ventilator developed by Walton emulating Medtronic's PB560 model, which was approved by the united states Food and Drug Administration, will be technologically sound as Medtronic directly supervised production from its Dhaka and Hyderabad offices.
Medtronic also supplied more than ten parts of the ventilator which were not available in Bangladesh.
The federal government on March 31 received the patent, design and source code for making ventilators from Medtronic, and moved to manufacture ventilators locally.
Walton has already been importing equipment and raw materials for bulk production and these should reach the united states within May, according to its Executive Director Golam Murshed.
Liakat Ali, executive director of Walton Group and adviser of the project, said they want the government's support regarding approval and souring equipment to help make the project successful.
"If we can manage this situation successfully, we are able to even export ventilators," he said.
Walton also sent some ventilators to the biomedical engineering department of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology for his or her opinion.
