AS the Covid pandemic spread, the government provided ventilators to hospitals for the treatment of those having acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, there was paucity of trained doctors, intensivists, respiratory therapists and nurses to run the equipment effectively.

Moreover, ventilator use with endotracheal tubes (ETTs) is fraught with high mortality rate; 87 per cent in New York and 76pc in Wuhan. A team of professionals, as such, set out to find a user-friendly strategy of using the ventilators, and came up with an improvised version of ventilators which replace the ETTs with face masks.

The equipment was first employed at the Mayo Hospital intensive care unit (ICU). Data was collected and it got published in the Annals of King Edward Medical University. Once the equipment started showing survival rate over 60pc — to be precise, 64 — it was used across Punjab, like at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Expo Centre in Lahore, Nishtar Medical University in Multan, the Bahawal Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur, etc.

The team trained the staff at each centre and together they have been able to save tens of thousands of lives. This is the only original work ever having been undertaken in Pakistan’s medical history. This technique is now being employed in several resource-constrained countries.

In December 2020, the Mayo Clinic in the United States also endorsed the policy of using ventilators with face masks. This was nine months after Pakistan had started using them in March 2020.

But, unfortunately, the untiring efforts of the team remain unnoticed, unrecognised and unappreciated. They remain the unsung heroes.

Dr Salman Ayyaz and Dr Shakeel Ahmed Khan
Nishtar Medical University
Multan

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2021