As cities and hospitals across the globe are overrun with coronavirus patients, the acute shortage of medical equipment has been the biggest problem. In fact, so acute is the problem of shortage of equipment that doctors in Italy have to play god in deciding who lives and who dies. As more and more people are getting admitted in hospitals across India, the fear now is that the requirement of critical care equipment such as ventilators , sanitizers, masks, and scrub suits should not lead to a similar predicament. This acute shortage has the tendency to impede India’s fight against Covid-19.At the heart of the demand is the urgent need for ventilators. Covid-19 can lead to severe lower respiratory tract infection, which means patients often need ventilator support. But what is the status of ventilators in India? According to Johns Hopkins University , the demand for ventilator demand can be as high as 1 million in the country. Current availability in India is estimated to have between 30,000 and 50,000 ventilators. It says the US has about 160,000 and is running short in most places.To deal with this crippling shortage of medical equipment, the Union government, on Tuesday, banned the export of ventilators, sanitizers and other ICU equipment with immediate effect. AgVa Healthcare , a Noida-based startup, which has built a cost-effective portable ventilator is lending a hand here in ramping up the production and supply of ventilators.“We are working to manufacture 20,000 units in the next 30 days,” Diwakar Vaish, co-founder, AgVa Healthcare told ET Digital.The government has reached out to the company to manufacture 5,000 ventilators by April 15 to help hospitals facing a shortage of the equipment across India.Set up in 2017, Vaish founded AgVa Healthcare with the aim to replace the traditional heavy and bulky ventilators in hospitals with a portable one that resembles an electronic tablet. In 2016, Vaish, a robotic scientist, witnessed how patients in AIIMS New Delhi were unable to be discharged from the hospital and would reside there for years as they are ventilator-bound. To change this narrative, Vaish along with the team from AIIMS developed a portable, low-cost ventilator, which will enable patients to take the ventilator home with ease.“The device is priced between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh. Meanwhile, the traditional ventilator costs somewhere between Rs 4-5 lakh, therefore, our device costs nearly one-fifth of the existing ventilators in the hospitals,” he said.He added that that whenever they disclose the price to doctors, they are always met with a surprised reaction as doctors are often unaware of the existence of a cost-effective ventilator.The robotic scientist-turned-entrepreneur explained that the ventilator is not only small in size, but also has advanced features than the existing ventilators. While existing ventilators need external oxygen supply and medical air to run it, AgVa’s ventilator runs on room air. The bulky ventilators used in hospitals are not at all user-friendly and require technical expertise to understand, whereas AgVa’s ventilator, which weighs less than 3 kg, has a simple touchscreen interface which is easy to understand and can be run using an Android-powered phone. This makes the ventilator very user-friendly for the patient’s family and relatives to operate from home.The portable ventilator does not require any installation or configuration, it is a simple plug-and-play system. “It uses only 20 watts of power and can be run on both 220 Volt and 12 volt ambulance sockets,” he said.Till date, around 600 AgVa ventilators have been installed in hospitals pan India and they also have a good presence in Tier-II and III cities.Amidst the ongoing pandemic, the firm is working hard to increase the production capacity. However, according to Vaish, there might be certain bottlenecks which are hampering this opportunity. With the government imposing lockdown in the country, many manufacturing plants and factories have been shut down.“All domestic freight shipping has been stopped. A lot of manufacturing packages and parts were coming from international companies such as DHL and others, but now they have all shut down their operations. Therefore, the overall supply chain has been hit due to the recent lock down. So there are a lot of restrictions due to which we have not been able to freely move,” he said.He also said that many international orders that the company had had to be cancelled as currently they are focusing on the problem in hand in India and cannot cater to other parts of the world.While supply chain and logistics are one of the foremost challenges that AgVa is facing, Vaish added manpower too in the list. “We do not have people who are ready to work or come to office during this pandemic. Everything seems to be against us at this point of time, but we are still trying our best and we will definitely get things in order.”The company is increasing its labour force manifold, completely revamping overall manufacturing infrastructure and also strengthening its production lines to address the growing demand of such medical equipment.