Published on April 24, 2020
Ahmedabad: World over, the doctors and paramedical staff treating Covid-19 patients are getting infected with the virus. Primary reason for the phenomenon is proximity of the anaesthetists and surgeons to the patients’ head and neck area where viral load and presence of aerosols is more.
A team of Dr Atul Gaur, consultant anaesthetist at the University Hospitals of Leicester, UK, and Dr Rajeev Lochan Tiwari, HoD, anaesthesia, at Fortis Escorts Hospital, Jaipur, have found a solution to this problem in form of I-CAD (infection control assist device) project. The project is incubated at Nidhi Techno Business Incubator (NIDHI-TBI) at Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar (IIPH-G).
Dr Gaur, lead inventor for the device, said that the project could be defined as a simple solution for complex problem. “Advanced healthcare systems have concept of negative pressure operation theatres (OTs) for management of airborne contagious diseases. It’s different than the normal OTs as its pressure is lower than the adjoining areas, causing the air to flow from higher pressure to lower pressure area, changing the air inside,” he said. This helps in reducing the infectious viral load leaking out to reduce the indoor hospital pollution. “But not all hospitals can afford to get such OTs. Thus, the idea was to create a small enclosure that can function exactly like the negative pressure chamber.”
Dr Tiwari worked on the first prototype where he used a bin to create the hood-like device with two suction tubes.
Parth Shastri Archive 