Mahindra to manufacture Ford-designed face shield

Mahindra & Mahindra set to make face shields for medical service providers, using a Ford design. (Image: Dr Pawan Goenka/Twitter)

Mahindra & Mahindra, which is actively engaged in the fight against coronavirus and is assisting the government of India and medical services, is to begin manufacture of a face shield/mask, developed from a design sourced from Ford Motor Corporation, from March 30.

In a tweet this evening, Dr Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, said:  “With a design sourced from our partner Ford Motor, we are now ready to make this Face Shield for use of medical service providers. Targeting to make 500 on Monday and then ramp up.”

Also working on sophisticated, low-cost ventilator
Meanwhile, the company, is concurrently working on developing a sophisticated but low-cost ventilator. On March 26, in a series of tweets, Dr Goenka had said that Mahindra & Mahindra, along with two large PSUs, is working with an existing manufacturer of high-spec ventilators to help simplify the design and also scale up manufacturing capacity.

The company is hopeful of having a prototype of an automated version of the bag-type mask ventilator (known as Ambu bag) very soon. An update on this is expected on March 29. Dr Goenka’s tweet read, ” Once proven, this design will be made available to all for manufacturing.”

It is understood that the company’s personnel at the Kandivli and Igatpuri plants in Maharashtra worked to develop this low-cost ventilator, estimated to cost around Rs 7,500. Referring to the same, Anand Mahindra, chairman, Mahindra & Mahindra, tweeted: “This could be a game-changer in quickly providing large numbers of low cost life savers, particularly when ICU ventilators are still scarce.”

As per medical dictionaries, an Ambu Bag is a self-refilling bag-valve-mask unit with a 1- to 1.5-litre capacity, used for artificial respiration which, while suboptimal for the non-intubated patient, is effective in for ventilating and oxygenating intubated patients, allowing both spontaneous and artificial respiration.