How to Slash COVID Deaths in India

WASHINGTON - April 27, 2021 - PRLog -- In India some 200,000 people have already died from COVID-19 because of acute shortages of medical oxygen and hospital ventilators, but there is a life-saving solution which can work in many cases, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Although medical-grade oxygen delivered in large cylinders is best, small inexpensive portable oxygen generators (or concentrators) may provide a partial solution as a backup when pure oxygen is simply not available.

Oxygen generators which can provide oxygen indefinitely, and which can be operated for extended periods of time from a 12-volt battery on any car or truck, can be ordered for about $400 U.S. retail, and presumably even less if purchased in bulk.

A novel proven strategy now growing in use could make it possible to provide enough respiratory assistance to save hundreds of thousands of lives, says Banzhaf, who was one of the first to suggest and aggressively promote this new procedure.

Ventilators are very expensive and complex pieces of equipment which require trained operators.

But CPAP, BiPAP, and similar breathing machines used to treat snoring and other sleep apnea problems - have now been approved for use in treating COVID-19 patients, and have been shown to be effective in many cases.

Banzhaf, an MIT-educated engineer and inventor, was one of the first to suggest and widely promote the concept of using these comparatively simple and much less expensive devices in many situations in which a COVID-19 patient required respiratory assistance to remain alive, but did not necessarily need the full power and sophistication of a modern hospital ventilator.

His suggestion received a major boost when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] not only recommended the procedure, but made it legal by a ruling dated March 22, 2020.

This dramatic expansion to the arsenal of weapons against the deadly virus is very important, says Banzhaf, because:
* hospital ventilators are in short supply while there are millions of existing CPAP machines, in homes and in medical warehouses
* hospitals and medical treatment centers are able to afford many more CPAPs (at about $850) than ventilators ($25K-50K)
* people are readily donating CPAP machines which are no longer needed, something Banzhaf originally suggested in a TV interview;
* many CPAP machines can be powered by 12-volt electricity, so they can be used wherever there is a vehicle or vehicle battery, even if electric power in the region is spotty, intermittent, or even unavailable.

For more information about using CPAP devices to help treat COVID-19 patients in respiratory distress, please see http://banzhaf.net/by/COVID.html

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf