Engineering students in Senegal have joined their country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic with inventions such as automatic sanitiser dispensers and medical robots. The students attending a top engineering school in the capital, Dakar, have turned their technical skills towards easing pressure on the wards – and they are already in talks with hospitals over some of their innovations. One example is a small robot, dubbed “Dr Car”, which will be able to measure patients’ blood pressure and temperature, according to students from Dakar’s Ecole Superieure Polytechnique. The university is considered one of West Africa’s best for engineering and technology, and is highly selective, with 28 nationalities represented among its 4,000 students. Lamine Mouhamed Kebe, one of the students who conceived the robot, said the machine would reduce the exposure of doctors and nurses to infected patients and use of expensive protective gear. Guided by a mounted camera and controlled via an app, doctors will also be able to communicate with patients through the robot, Kebe said, potentially allowing them to treat people isolated in hard-to-reach rural areas.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
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