The world is currently going through an unprecedented crisis in the modern times.  A highly infectious virus named COVID-19 has been spreading throughout the world with almost every country in the world reporting positive cases.  The virus attacks the respiratory system and the infected person exhibits flu-like symptoms and can be fatal to old people or people with weak immune systems.  The virus spread so quickly that healthcare professionals are unable to keep up with the influx of cases and hospitals are filled to the brim with no room to accommodate more cases in some countries.  In the midst of this, there is an acute shortage of medical masks which come under personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses. A normal surgical mask does not help with keeping the virus at bay and healthcare professionals require an N95 mask.  An N95 mask or N95 respirator is a particulate-filtering facepiece respirator that meets the N95 standard of the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health air filtration rating, meaning that it filters at least 95% of airborne particles.

The COVID-19 virus made its way to India and the central government sprung to action and imposed a nationwide lockdown for three weeks which began on March 24th,2020.  India also has a severe shortage of PPEs with many doctors and hospitals complaining about a lack of the masks. The shortage is partly due to the panic buying indulged by the public and also due to unavailability of masks.

Times like these always give way to extraordinary individuals who rise up to the occasion.  Abrar is one such individual who rose to the occasion. It all began when Abrar noticed the strain on the medical fraternity and the healthcare infrastructure due to lack of resources and PPEs.  This prompted Abrar into action and got him thinking about how to create a face shield at home with simple raw materials easily available. After some initial brainstorming and research on the internet, it took Abrar 24 hours to come up with a working design for a face shield.  

Abrar then put the prototype design on his Instagram handle and asked for feedback and support from his friends.  What began as a simple post ended up becoming something bigger as it garnered more and more attention, friends and strangers ended up contributing money to help Abrar produce more such face shields.  It took just one Instagram post for Abrar to collect two lakh rupees within 24 hours. Abrar has raised 3 lakh rupees so far which is roughly enough to produce 30,000 masks.

Abrar and a group of friends then came together to fine tune the design and with constant feedback from doctors, they were finally able to come up with a product that can be used by medical professionals.  However, increasing production comes with its own set of problems as it severely restricts logistics and manpower mobility due to the lockdown set in place. Abrar is however hopeful that he could obtain official passes which would let manpower to venture outside.

Abrar believes that public health care units are the highest priority when it comes to delivering his face shields.  The product received positive feedback and a lot of corporate companies working on essential services have contacted Abrar to buy the product for their on ground and field employees.  Abrar sells the product to corporates at double the cost of raw materials and the profit will be used to make more products to be given away for free to public healthcare units. Abrar wants to connect with representatives from each state to teach them how to make the face shield themselves and cater to their local markets and Bombay is already on board.  All communications happen via WhatsApp.

The team is currently working on two more designs which are costlier and involve higher quality raw materials.  Abrar is an automobile engineer based out of Bengaluru and works for Ather Energy and has a passion for racing bikes.  Abrar believes that more people need to be aware of how to make PPEs at home in order to help people who need it the most.

If you would like to be a part of this movement, you could contribute or get in touch with Abrar on his Instagram handle.  There is also a handy guide to make a face shield by yourself on a link on his profile.

https://www.instagram.com/abrar_bin_ayub/