The Air Force has manufactured a ‘Heated Humidified Oxygen Therapy Unit’ to overcome the shortages of ventilators in the country while it is battling COVID19.

This event was attended by the Minister of Health, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, General (Retd) Kamal Gunaratna, Secretary to the Ministry of Health, Major General (Retd) Sanjeewa Munasinghe Commander of the Air Force, Air Marshal Sudarshana Pathirana, Director General Engineering, Air Vice Marshal MD Rathnayake, the Commanding Officer of the General Engineering Wing of the SLAF, Group Captain Prasanka Martino, Dr. Thilanka Ratnapala who was one of the medical experts of the design team and Squadron Leader KRRN Pushpakumara the Project Engineering Officer.

On the instructions of the President, the SLAF was tasked with leading a project to innovate and manufacture a ‘Heated Humidified Oxygen Therapy Unit’ in a bid to overcome the shortages of ventilators in the country at a time when the world is battling COVID-19.

Accordingly, the SLAF under the leadership of the Commander of the Air Force took the lead in designing and developing a ‘Heated Humidified Oxygen Therapy Unit’ (HHOT) under the then Commanding Officer of the General Engineering Wing, Group Captain Indika Wickramasinghe with the expert guidance of Dr. Bandula Vijay, Professor Ranil De Silva and a team of medical experts. The manufacturing process was carried out by technical experts of the General Engineering at Katunayake under the supervision of the Commanding Officer, Group Captain Prasanka Martino.

As a result of this effort, a prototype was manufactured and subjected to rigorous testing for over 200 hours in order to check its limitations, safety features and performance standards. The same was presented to the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) of Sri Lanka and successfully completed the second evaluation on 25 June 2020 with compliance to IEC 60601 Electrical Safety Standard as confirmed by the University of Moratuwa. Even though the initial estimate which was done to be 1.5 million Rupees, the finally production cost was reduced to a minimal Rs. 300,000.00 owing to the outstanding efforts of the Air Force Engineering Team.

On completion of above testing, the equipment was authorized for clinical trials, where one prototype was utilized at the National Hospital in Colombo. After trials at the National Hospitals, the prototype unit has now been installed at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University Hospital in Werahera. Two more Units have been manufactured by the SLAF and are currently being utilized at SLAF Hospitals in Colombo and Katunayake.