Story By: Gheorghi Caraseni, Sub Editor:  Joseph Golder,  Agency: Newsflash

This is the makeshift ventilator created out of a plastic bag by Ukrainian docs as a cheap alternative during a shortage amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Doctor Elizaveta Shilova, no age reported, works in a hospital in the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and recently shared a photo on social media with a team of her colleagues using the makeshift ventilator as there are a lack of normal ventilators in the country.

In the photo, one of the doctors has a plastic bag on her head with several tubes connected to it.

According to Shilova, this equipment can be used to create ventilation by constant positive pressure, which normal medical ventilators are used for.

The doctor said that a similar solution was used in Ukraine over twenty years ago when there was a lack of functioning ventilators too.

She wrote on social media “So many lives were saved that time! Why not?”

According to the Ukrainian doctor, the most difficult in creating the equipment was finding a suitable plastic bag.

She said: “Lots of them were tearing up and many smelled quite bad. Some of the ones we tried to use smelled so bad that even a healthy person started feeling bad afterwards.”

The doctor said that for the second attempt, a local manufacturer finally managed to create a proper plastic bag, at their request, which they could connect to the tubes with adhesive tape and it did not let air through.

She said: “This whole story reminds me somewhat of films about an apocalyptic future, when people unite against a common external threat and somehow manage to survive by some miracle. Yes, this is not a complete victory over COVID-19. But this is our small step in this direction.”

She announced that the bags could be used in local hospitals and they are absolutely ready to help in the treatment of patients, but it is unclear if they will be put to use.

According to the latest figures from the Johns Hopkins University there have been 1,668 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ukraine with 52 deaths and 35 recoveries.

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