Bhubaneswar: Doctors and other health workers treating COVID-19 patients face a lot of problems with their PPE kits, particularly a sense of suffocation as air cannot circulate inside.
Keeping this in mind, 11 engineering students from Odisha have designed a PPE kit with a small fan fixed on it to keep the wearer feeling cool.
Initially, a third year student of CET College, Ashirbad Sahoo, along with IIIT, Bhubaneswar students Sai Sambit Nayak and Soubhit Mitra came up with the idea for the novel PPE kit. Then Tapaswini Padhi, Sidhharth Nayak, Ananya Aparameya, Jibhetosh Debata, Vital Gupta, Nanda Kishore Gupta, Dibyajyoti Das, and Kaustav Mohanty of both CET and IIIT joined them in designing the kit.
Odisha-based start-up Atal Incubation Centre helped the students to produce the kit.
The fan, installed on the kit, will be run by battery. It will work for eight hours continuously after recharge of the batteries. The kit can also purified easily.
Police, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses among others can use this kit.
The most important thing is that after wearing the kit, the use of mask and face shield is not necessary. The face shield is already installed in the kit.
For their success, Union Education Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has praised the young innovators through a tweet.
President Ram Nath Kovind has also invited them to meet him.
The young innovators are now planning to supply these kits to various government and private organisations in Odisha and outside of the state also.
