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4. Colombia close to having world's first open source and low-cost ventilator
Fri Mar 27, 2020, 06:39 PM
Mar 2020

From Colombia Reports, March 20, 2020

A team of engineers and scientists in Medellin were able to create a prototype of a low-cost open source ventilator that could save countless lives during the coronavirus pandemic.

The lack of mechanical ventilators that allow patients to get enough oxygen while fighting the respiratory illness is a major bottleneck in Colombia, which has less than 10,000 of these mechanical ventilators.

But Colombia isn’t the only country that could soon run out of these life-saving, but complex and expensive machines; hospitals across the globes are short of the machines and production is limited.

A week after Stanford University scientist Daniel Kraft called for a global medical hackathon to create a low-cost and open source ventilator, engineer Mauricio Toro of the Antioquia University announced was putting the final touches on a prototype.

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