All-girl team in Afghanistan invent ventilator at 1/28th of the usual cost

An all-girl team of students in Herat, Afghanistan (known as the Afghan Dreamers) has developed a light-weight ventilator made of old car parts. The ventilator, which can run on a battery for 10 hours, costs $700 to make instead of the usual $20,000. The student robotics team spent four months on developing the ventilator, with the assistance of Harvard University, and the Afghanistan Health Ministry has decided to use it across the country. As reported in The Times, the ventilator, which was partly based on a design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will also be shared with the World Health Organization (WHO) should they want to use it in other countries. ■

For more news coverage, please visit our News section.