Locally developed ventilators will be handed over to NDMA: Fawad

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhry Fawad Hussain has said that Pakistan has completed manufacturing the first batch of locally assembled ventilators and will be handed over to NDMA this week.

On a social media website Twitter, the minister said: “The first batch of ventilators will be handed over to NDMA this week.” he added that three more designs are also in the last stages of approval.

“We will be counted amongst few countries that manufacture complicated medical machines,” he said. He mentioned that all these machines are up to European Union standards.

الحمدللہ #MadeInPakistan #ventilators کی پہلی کھیپ NDMA کو اس ہفتے حوالے ہو جائیگی، #NRTC کو بہت مبارک اگلے تین ڈیزائن بھی آخری مراحل میں ہیں جس کے بعد ہم دنیا کے ان چند ممالک میں شامل ہوں گے جو پیچیدہ میڈیکل مشینیں بناتے ہیں، یہ تمام مشینیں EU Standards کے مطابق ہیں

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) June 28, 2020

Earlier, the minister said that there is an urgent need to locally manufacture ventilators due to the rising number of coronavirus patients worldwide that had made the import of the new equipment a difficult task.

A prototype of the machine was successfully tested at the Indus Hospital Karachi and the Combine Military Hospital.

The cost of indigenously manufactured ventilators would be three times less than the imported ones. Initially, 500 ventilators have been manufactured on priority to deal with the Covid-19 emergency.

“We have made teams in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Quetta, and Peshawar who will provide free training on operating ventilators to hospital staff, he further said. He said Pakistan had taken all possible measures to fight the dangerous virus as the pandemic had played havoc globally.