AFMC develops ‘Raksha Kawach’ to protect health care workers managing airborne diseases like Covid19
AFMC develops ‘Raksha Kawach’ to protect health care workers managing airborne diseases
COVID-19 has taken the world by surprise with more than 72 Lakhs cases and more than 1.1 Lakhs deaths in India till date. Though healthcare workers (HCW) have been donning appropriate PPEs, the viral load grows exponentially in closed spaces like the ICUs and the ward designated for COVID patients, increasing the risk of infection. Oxygen delivery strategies like non-invasive ventilation and High flow nasal cannula, for managing these patients generate large amounts of viral-laden aerosols. Thus, there has been an urgent need to develop an innovative solution to reduce the contagious aerosol imprint in hospital sminimizingthe risk to HCW as well as the patients.
To address this burning issue amidst COVID pandemic, Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune has come up with the ‘Raksha Kawach’, a patient isolation device to protect healthcare workers from infectious aerosols. It was developed by the team led by Lt. Col. (Dr.) Shamik Kr Paul, a Neuro anaesthesiologist and an Assistant Professor in Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at AFMC and Dr. Ajay Suryavanshi, a biomedical engineer and an alumnus of IIT Bombay. The device is not just COVID 19 specific, it is also intended to minimize the contagion load in the hospital atmosphere housing patients with other airborne diseases.
Raksha Kawach is a compact, quickly-deployable, portable, user-friendly and cost-effective aerosol containment system with 2 modules: a retractable canopy unit to create a physical barrier around the patient and a fan-filter unit to scavenge and filter contaminated air.The canopy is made up of a disposable transparent collapsible plastic enclosure and a reusable retractable plastic frame with all-detachable components. The fan-filter unit selectively clears off aerosols released from patient by applying negative pressure over patient’s exhale cloud by means of suction blower, further filtering through HEPA and disinfecting by UVC radiation to vent off decontaminated air.
The unique feature of this device is 2 modes for immediate access to the patient: suitably sized ‘on-off’ windows at front and back walls of canopy for brief procedures (canopy on)and instant retraction for long-term procedures (canopy off). The canopy dimensions are large enough to avoid any patient claustrophobia, still maintaining smaller footprint to accommodate into ICU limited floor space. The canopy is light weight, easy and fast to install (and uninstall) within 5-10 minutes and can be packed into carry-bag similar to cricket-kit bag for easy transport and storage.
The safety and effectiveness of the device has been established by comprehensive 3rd party validation from NABL-accredited testing facility. The provisional patent and design registration have been filed for this innovative technology which is ready for tech-transfer to interested licensing partners on non-exclusive basis.
Raksha Kawach is beneficial for diverse user-cases e.g. single-bed and multi-bed (array of canopies connected to single fan-filter unit) ICUs, COVID/TB hospitals/wards, triage centers, quarantine facilities as well as home isolation. This innovation would have a greater impact in reducing the infectiousness of the airborne diseases like COVID-19, TB, etc., thus creating safer work environment for HCWimproving patient careand become an integral part of hospital infrastructure as airborne infection-control strategy in post-COVID era.
