Maria Estrella

OpenVenti

We all know that the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has collapsed the world's health services. According to the WHO report, approximately 14% of infected people will present severe symptoms, and another 6% will develop critical symptoms. This report has alerted countries whose healthcare systems are unable to respond to the enormous demand for severe and critical cases. One of the medical resources most needed to assist patients who develop respiratory failure is the ventilator, which helps to inject and extract air from their lungs. Given that in Latin America hospital ventilators are mostly imported, there is an alert that we do not have enough ventilators to deal with serious cases and that this will produce dramatic consequences. The OpenVenti project integrates the efforts of individuals and organizations from the public and private sectors, all contributing with resources, infrastructure, knowledge and experience, in order to establish a viable alternative for the manufacture of ventilators for hospital use, which can be produced locally in the Latin American countries facing difficulties in importing and accessing this device.