Durban organisation ready to start producing ventilators for Covid-19

JOHANNESBURG - A group of Durban-based businessmen, who started a non-profit organisation to locally produce ventilators to meet the need of Covid-19 patients, has received regulatory approval for their locally made product.

The South African Ventilator Emergency Project (SAVE-P), in a press statement issued recently, confirmed it had received approval from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) after months of painstaking work.

SAVE-P is led by businessman Justin Corbett and Dr Greg Ash, who also run a non-profit named Nurturing Orphans of Aids for Humanity.

According to Corbett, the project stands ready to start manufacturing.

On Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that 1, 700 new ventilators had been procured. He did not specify whether this included a donation of more than 1 000 ventilators from the United States.

According to the statement, Corbett and Ash “called upon local manufacturers they were familiar with the reliability and conformance of” to join the SAVE-P project.

News24 previously reported that the SAVE-P project was attempting to reverse engineer a Penlon Nuffield 200, a small compact ventilator unit that did not contain any complicated electronics that would take months to reproduce and develop. “As a team, they evaluated designs that would be best suited to meet the requirements of respiratory therapy to treat Covid-19 patients, as well as ease-of-use for medical staff operating under highly stressful conditions with minimal training prior to using the device,” the SAVE-P statement read.

More than 90 volunteers worked on the project, according to SAVE-P.

– NEWS24.