IO, Yogyakarta – A number of students and alumni of Gadjah Mada University (UGM) Yogyakarta have collaborated to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face shields, to support treatment of Covid-19 in various health facilities. This initiative emerged after they saw the lack of PPE availability for medical personnel.
“Medics are the frontline in the fight against Covid-19, so the availability of PPE for them is vital. We have enough resources to develop and produce face shields. Thus, we think ‘Why don’t we help provide it?’” said Muhammad Fahmi Husaen, alumnus of D3 Computer Science UGM Vocational School, as quoted from ugm.ac.id, Monday (4/13/2020).
With several alumni colleagues and students, he created a community called AmalYuk (Let’s do Charity-Red) to help provide PPE for medical personnel. The activities they carry out, he said, were purely a charity movement. Therefore, the face shields they produce are distributed free of charge to hospitals that need them.
“AmalYuk is a combination of individuals, UGM Vocational School campus and start-up company WiranagariTech, with 16 members, consisting of alumni and UGM students, we jointly initiated the volunteer movement,” he said
The students and alumni involved mostly have a background in mechanical engineering education as well as electronics and instrumentation (Elins), and receive guidance from one of Elins lecturers, Budi Sumanto. Production is carried out in the Elins Laboratory of UGM Vocational School.
This team is able to produce 40-80 face shields every day, and these have begun to be distributed to a number of places, including PMI Bantul and Grhasia Pakem Hospital. “We are also working with Kagama Gelanggang to distribute,” said Rokhim, the team’s coordinator.
The team targets production of up to 1,300 face shields. Rokhim added that the production activity they carried out was an emergency action to support the availability of PPE that was needed immediately. For that, after the production targets are met, the team will evaluate whether they still need to produce face shields.
“The target is 1,300; afterwards, we will probably evaluate the situation, considering that this is an emergency apparatus, and around Yogyakarta there are already factories that mass produce to acceptable standards,” he said. (*/est)