While Tunisian laboratories are struggling to keep up with COVID-19 testing, Tunisia was one of the first countries in the region to decode the local strain of the virus, a necessary step towards developing a vaccine.
The feared impact of Coronavirus on Tunisia’s fragile public health system has provoked a flurry of innovation from robotics to digitization efforts to bolster the North African country’s pandemic response.
Tunisia has reported 38 deaths and fewer than 1,000 cases of Coronavirus, but the impact of the lockdown in effect since March 22 has decimated the economy.
The government is eager to highlight the Tunisian response to the virus, creating a website to showcase the country’s many innovations both by government and non-government bodies. It has even turned to students for help, asking the engineering school in Sousse, south of the capital Tunis, to task its students with designing a locally made ventilator as their end-of-year project.
The health ministry has adopted an application developed by students to track hospital bed availability and facilitate transfers and the deployment of extra emergency bed space.
Ventilators are crucial for treating critically ill COVID-19 patients, but as in many countries, Tunisia’s poorly equipped hospitals lack sufficient numbers of the devices.
Costs and delivery times for ventilators have increased dramatically.
“Students, teachers and doctors have come up with a functioning prototype,” said Aref Meddeb, the school’s director.
“This is the first time these machines have been made in Tunisia. It shows that there is real potential here.”
Other Tunisian researchers have developed plans for a simplified respirator made with 3-D printed parts.
It will soon be made freely available, allowing undeveloped countries without access to sophisticated equipment to make their own.
“We are using everything that we can find open source and the help of a Tunisian engineer specialized in respirators,” said Khalil Allouch, an engineering student on the local respirator project based in Tunis.
“This crisis has shown us we can be more self-sufficient.”
