In the eastern Afghan city of Herat, 18-year-old high school student Somaya Faruqi adjusts a suction cap as she puts the finishing touches before unveiling a low-cost, lightweight ventilator created by her and six other young women.
The all-female Afghan Robotics Team, which has won international awards for its robots, started work in March on an open-source, low-cost ventilator as the coronavirus pandemic hit the war-torn nation.
It took the team almost four months to finalize the ventilator, which is partly based on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) design, and they received guidance from experts at Harvard University.
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
The device is easy to carry, can run on battery power for 10 hours and costs around US$700 (approx. NT$21,000) to produce, compared with the US$20,000 price of a traditional ventilator.
Although the ventilator still has to undergo final testing from health authorities before it can be used, officials welcome it in a country with only 800 ventilators, to treat the fast-growing number of coronavirus cases in a health system damaged by decades of war.
Health Ministry spokesman Akmal Samsor said once the ventilators were approved they would be rolled out in Afghan hospitals and the design shared with the World Health Organization.
Afghanistan has recorded 36,710 COVID-19 cases and 1,283 deaths, though experts warn that the true count is probably far higher due to low testing rates.
(Reuters)
在阿富汗東部的城市赫拉特，十八歲的高中生索瑪亞‧法路琪調整了吸盤，在這款低成本、輕便的呼吸器發表前，做最後的修飾。這呼吸器是由法路琪和其他六位年輕女性一起創作出來的。
阿富汗機器人團隊全由女子組成，所設計的機器人曾獲得國際獎項。冠狀病毒疫情重創已飽經戰火摧殘的阿富汗，因此小組成員自三月起，便開始研發開源、低成本的呼吸器。
該團隊花了近四個月的時間完成呼吸器，它部分是基於美國麻省理工學院的設計，團隊也受到哈佛大學專家的指導。
這套裝置便於攜帶，可用電池供電，續航力有十小時；其成本約為七百美元（約為台幣兩萬一千元），傳統的呼吸器則要價兩萬美元。
雖然這套呼吸器還必須經過衛生主管機關的最後測試才能夠派上用場，但在這僅有八百套呼吸器、染疫民眾暴增、醫療系統已被數十年戰亂毀壞的國家，政府官員對此呼吸器的研發樂見其成。
阿富汗衛生部發言人阿克馬‧山穆索表示，這些呼吸器一經核准，便將推廣至國內各醫院使用，其設計也將與世界衛生組織共享。
阿富汗已有三萬六千七百一十人確診武漢肺炎（冠狀病毒病，COVID-19），其中一千二百八十三人死亡，但專家表示，由於檢測率低，實際的數字可能還要高得多。
(台北時報林俐凱編譯)
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