![President Uhuru Kenyatta [Photo/Courtesy]](https://mwalimubeware.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/web-1.png "President Uhuru Kenyatta [Photo/Courtesy]")
President Uhuru Kenyatta has applauded the efforts by Kenyatta University Students for coming up with a ventilator prototype to help in the fight against COVID-19.
Kenyatta University students developed ventilators for COVID-19 patients who developed difficulty breathing since they are only a handful in the country.
Speaking during a presser today, April 16, 2020, the Head of State commended the efforts initiated by Kenyans of goodwill to win the fight against COVID-19, adding that everyone should take responsibility.
The invention was done by 16 KU students in under one week and detailed the prototype, a cubical unit made of hard silver plastic parts with pipes connecting to an oxygen tank and two other pipes delivering the air.
The mechanical unit is controlled from a computer on top of it from where doctors can monitor the concentration of oxygen in the air that the machine is pumping into the patients’ lungs as well as control the ventilators’ intensity.
If approved, the University Vice-Chancellor indicated that the institution was capable of producing 50 ventilators per week.
We came up with the idea to make a ventilator when we heard that there were in short supply and with almost all the countries in lockdown, we could not import them from elsewhere, he said.
Further, President Uhuru announced a welfare package for health workers to cushion medical workers on the frontline against COVID-19.
He also directed medical insurance companies to cover hospital staff managing the COVID-19 pandemic.
