As the world is facing shortage of medical equipment to fight the coronavirus, a Rajkot-based company has developed low cost ventilators in just 10 days and will deliver 1,000 of these machines to the Gujarat government-run hospitals in next few days. The ventilator, developed by a private company, was tested at a medical lab of the Ahmedabad civil hospital and given an approval on Friday night, an official said.

The locally developed ventilator is being used for patients from Saturday, he said, adding that the machine is working fine. The entire world is fighting the silent enemy coronavirus and is facing shortage of equipment like ventilators, N95 masks and PPE suits for doctors, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said on Saturday.

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“When we have skills and big industries here, the Gujarat government decided to use it. Rajkot is considered as an engineering hub. Small scale industries of Rajkot supply engineering parts to NASA, ISRO, Railways and for defence production, ” Rupani said.

“I am happy to announce that an industrialist from Rajkot has been successful in manufacturing ventilators in just 10 days. They designed it, made a prototype, procured parts and successfully built ventilators. Their testing has been done and certification has been completed. It is being used on patients from Saturday,” he told reporters.

Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, who is also Gujarat’s health minister, said the company, Jyoti CNC Automation Limited, has not only passed engineering requirements for the machine but also successfully cleared medical requirements at the testing lab.

“Chief Minister Rupani took special interest and invited industries to come forward and help to fight this global threat. He did regular follow-ups with the industry and assured and provided all help so that ventilators can be indigenously manufactured,” Mr Patel said.

Jyoti CNC has decided to donate first 1,000 ventilators to the Gujarat government, he said.

The company’s owner Prakaramsinh Jadeja said they were given the task which was difficult to achieve in this period of lockdown. “A team of nearly 150 people has been working day and night for last 10 days to develop a “Made in India” ventilator. Due to the lockdown and ban on international travel and goods movement, we cannot procure any parts from abroad. So we procured the ventilator parts from 26 different companies in India, Mr Jadeja said.

The ventilator developed by the company has been named as ”Dhaman 1”, which is the base model and fulfils the requirement of COVID-19 patients, he said, adding that later more advanced models will be developed.

Jadeja said the market cost of a single ventilator is Rs 6.5 lakh, but they have been able to manufacture it at a cost below Rs one lakh. “We will donate 1,000 ventilators to the Gujarat government. We have got the capacity of manufacturing 100 ventilators per day and after three days, we will ramp up the capacity as per the demand,” he said.

“Many state governments are in touch with us and after providing ventilators to Gujarat, we will supply it to other states,” he added. Till Saturday, Gujarat reported 108 cases of coronavirus and 10 deaths.