[ad_1]
Engineering students in Senegal have joined their country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic with inventions such as automatic disinfectant dispensers and medical robots.
Students attending one of the capital’s best engineering schools, Dakar, have focused their technical skills to ease the pressure on wards, and are already in talks with hospitals about some of their innovations.
Plus:
An example is a small robot, called “Dr Car”, which will be able to measure patients’ blood pressure and temperature, according to students at the Ecole Superieure Polytechnique (ESP) in Dakar.
The university is considered one of the best in West Africa for engineering and technology, and is highly selective, with 28 nationalities represented among its 4,000 students.
Lamine Mouhamed Kebe, one of the students who conceived the robot, said the machine would reduce exposure of doctors and nurses to infected patients and the use of expensive protective equipment.
“At one point … we realized that the medical equipment was limited,” the 23-year-old told the AFP news agency. “We can do something.”
Guided by a mounted camera and controlled through an app, doctors will also be able to communicate with patients via the robot, Kebe said, allowing them to treat isolated people in hard-to-reach rural areas.
COUNTING THE COST: Senegal’s $ 1 COVID-19 test kit and race for a vaccine (25:51) |
The Senegal coronavirus outbreak pales compared to the situation in Europe and the United States affected by the virus.
But after a slow start, confirmed cases in the nation of some 16 million people are on the rise. And as with other poor countries in the region, there is a fear that Senegal is ill-equipped to handle a large outbreak.
Authorities have recorded more than 1,700 cases to date, including 19 deaths. Hospital staff in Dakar are also starting to contract COVID-19, the highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Faced with a greater threat, Senegalese front-line doctors are taking young engineers seriously.
An initial prototype designed by the students was essentially a small mobile cart, designed to carry equipment or meals to patients.
But Abdoulaye Bousso, head of an emergency room at a hospital in Dakar, asked to redesign it to include mechanical arms capable of conducting medical tests, an update the students are now working on.
“It is quite a process,” Bousso said, adding that the robot could reduce the use of expensive bibs and gowns, which should be discarded.
Ndiaga Ndiaye, an ESP professor in charge of marketing the inventions, said the university has long emphasized hands-on projects and entrepreneurship, meaning that students were prepared to act when the virus broke out.
The robot is “far from being a device,” he said, and it could be produced on a larger scale once it’s ready.
“We are a public institution. There is a concept that unites us all, and that is service to the community,” he said.
Other students have come up with simpler devices that they also hope will fight the disease in Senegal.
Gianna Andjembe, a master’s student in electrical engineering, has designed an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser that he says could reduce the need for staff at schools and hospitals to supervise handwashing.
“It’s very simple, it’s basic,” said the 26-year-old. “As scientists, as engineers, we have to face the challenges and really take our destiny into our own hands,” added Andjembe.
The coronavirus has changed the lives of ESP students.
The lectures are now held on video, and students who used to play in the labs until late at night now have to rush home due to the curfew from dusk to dawn.
But the crisis has also given young engineers a sense of purpose.
“What has changed is responsibility,” said robot maker Kebe before adding that the students also felt “much more patriotism.”
Senegal: social distancing, difficult handwashing in the midst of poverty (2:19) |