Today, over a million people across the world are infected with COVID-19. The novel coronavirus has truly crippled the entire world. And the rising number of cases has put in an immense amount of load on emergency medical supplies.?
From protective suits, face masks, medical workers in the front line need the gear to protect them from infected patients, to treat them better while staying safe themselves from contracting COVID-19.?
However, the shortage of such supplies is causing immense discomfort for the medical workers, with many using garbage bags for protective cover and dangerously reusing masks to treat patients with no added protection from Coronavirus-laced droplets during close contact with patients.
However, Rohit Asil, co-founder of a 3D printing company Fracktal Works, decided to do something about it. He used his arsenal of 3D printing machinery, teamed up with his friends Raghav Sridhar, and Vijay Raghav Varada from Manipal University along with Vaibhav Hegde, owner of Hatch Bangalore Restaurant chain, to create face shields, and procure other necessary medical supplies for medical healthcare workers in Karnataka.
They’ve used the Ketto crowdsourcing platform to ask people to donate to the cause so that they can procure more supplies for healthcare workers. The fund raiser is aimed at providing face shields & sanitisers to doctors, nurses and healthcare workers in a variety of care settings in the Dakshina Kannada District, and they surpassed their fundraising goal in just 10 hours.
We got an opportunity to ask Asil Rohit, what made them start this initiative, to which he responded, “Witnessing the state of the doctors during the pandemic on the news immediately enabled us to brainstorm how we could provide aid at the earliest, with the resources we had at our disposal.
Asil further added, “With the alarming scarce availability of N95 Masks, we aimed at focusing on the prolonging use of existent N95 masks by mass producing thousands of face shields. There face shields ensure the reuse of N95 masks due to its limited number.”
At Fracktal, Asil and his team are 3D printing the main skeleton for the face shields. Some The transparent shields are made using OHP sheets that are used in OHP projectors. After 3D printing, the skeleton, assembling the whole face shield takes only a few minutes.
We were curious to know as of now how much supplies have they managed to donate to medical workers. According to Asil, “Currently, we are donating 3000 face shields to medical professions in tier 2 and tier 3 regions. We have also received government requests for the face shields, and plan on supplying close to 100,000 units.”
Asil Rohit is very proud of his tech and what it is accomplishing in these dark times. “Our extremely high volume of production courtesy of our expertise in production technology enabled us to create multiple supply chains in an extremely short period of time.”
He further added, “The sense of gratification we’ve all felt collectively as a result of helping the people on the front lines of this pandemic, both on a large scale, as well as the people we know personally, has been enormous.”
While meeting demands, immense supply pressures can make the situation even more challenging, but Asil Rohit took a positive outlook, “Being aware of the fact that our products could help people who are fighting the real fights fuels us with the essential drive we need to continue to do what we have been doing till now.”