News post from UNC-Asheville:
In an effort that is at once high-tech and homemade, a loose-knit group of people in the Asheville community and at UNC Asheville are working as volunteers to fabricate and donate PPE (personal protective equipment) to health care providers in Asheville and beyond to help protect against spread of COVID-19.
Protective face shields produced by this effort are now in use on the pediatrics floor at Mission Hospital in Asheville and also are en route to Vidant Health Center, affiliated with East Carolina University in Greenville N.C.
And that’s just the beginning. Additional and more varied kinds of PPE being produced in this town/gown collaborative will soon reach farther around the region thanks to a team of UNC School of Medicine students whose clinical rotations in Asheville have been curtailed by the virus.
Read more here…
Press release from Kudzu Brands:
Dr. Jason Cook, a physician with The Family Health Centers, and founder of Relaspen, an Asheville medical device startup that is developing a new migraine headache treatment, is shifting his company focus to producing personal Protective Equipment for Asheville healthcare providers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Working with Relaspen head engineer, Scott Shwarts, to find open source designs for reusable face shields that he could 3D print in his lab, the pair sourced the needed materials rapidly, and within a week had tweaked the design to make the masks more comfortable to wear for long periods of time. The shields are also very sturdy, easy to clean and sanitize, and don’t fog up like most of the face shields available for healthcare workers on the market. Full face shields like these greatly improve the protection provided by surgical style face masks, which is what many medical providers are wearing due to the shortage of N95 respirator type masks worldwide.
Dr. Cook initially purchased materials to produce 200 shields but will likely make more based on current demand.
Last week, Cook started distributing the masks to local health care organizations, many of whom are running respiratory “tent clinics” in their parking lots to assess patients who are possibly infected with Covid-19. He is also in contact with all the local hospitals to assess their needs.
His efforts are focused on our local Asheville / WNC healthcare providers and he is donating the masks free of charge.
Cook and Shwarts have shared their updated design with the 3D printing / makerspace community worldwide to allow others to benefit from what they have learned.
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