Madrid (AFP)

A respirator developed from a wiper motor and not patented to be able to be produced in Africa or Latin America: this is the bet of Dr Manuel Puig Domingo and the car manufacturer Seat in Spain against the coronavirus.

Less efficient than a conventional model, it was designed at a speed "that we would never have imagined" due to the health emergency, explains this endocrinologist in a telephone interview with AFP.

As in Spain, car manufacturers in other countries have started manufacturing precious respirators, such as General Motors or Ford in the United States or PSA in France.

In Spain, the project started from an unequivocal observation, according to Dr Puig: "if you depend on others" to produce sanitary equipment, "things can go very wrong". An experience lived by the country, among the most bereaved in the world by the Covid-19 and forced to import massively on a market that has become hyper-competitive.

Respirators are fundamental to saving lives because they provide artificial ventilation to the lungs of patients with bilateral pneumonia caused by the coronavirus.

A "fairly simple" model, this Spanish respirator is produced in the Seat factory (Volkswagen group) in Martorell in Catalonia in the north-east of the country and developed from a windshield motor. It has been tested on pigs and authorized by the Spanish Medicines Agency.

Unlike a standard model which allows total or partial respiratory assistance, the model of Dr Puig, director of the Research Center of the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital in Badalone, only provides total assistance.

After having started to recover their respiratory capacities, the patient must therefore be intubated with a standard model capable of ventilating it "on demand".

But Dr. Puig's team is currently working on the development of two other complete models which should be ready in a few weeks.

- For Africa or Latin America -

"In a modern and wealthy country, you shouldn't have to use" these basic respirators, says Dr. Puig.

But in the current context, 42 Spanish hospitals have ordered the model, baptized OxyGEN and developed on the basis of the idea of ​​a small engineering company from Barcelona, ​​Protofy.xyz, he underlines.

To allow its diffusion, this respirator will not be patented. "Any automaker or other industry with the capacity to produce this respirator can do it," a spokesman for Seat told AFP.

It is a "totally altruistic" project, fully funded by Seat for an amount that has not been specified, he said. Production started on Saturday at a rate of 100 units per day, which could be increased to 300, he said.

Dr. Puig hopes to see his model arrive in Africa or South America because "many countries on these continents cannot afford a large quantity of respirators". He claims to have received requests from Italy and is under discussion with Argentina and Chile.

But he especially wishes that this model "does not pass into the hands of people who would trade it".

© 2020 AFP