FACE SHIELD@UKM: An Initiative by UKM To Protect Our Frontliner During Covid-19 Pandemic
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Abstract
COVID-19 is a threatening pandemic to human being worldwide. Many of frontliner being infected in many ways. Private protective equipment (PPE) is a must to wear by all the medical personal when handling the COVID or treating the contagious patients. In normal circumstances, PPEs are easily available from medical suppliers. However, it there is disease outbreak like this COVID-19 and worldwide are affected, face shields are in high demand. Traditional process may not be able to cope with the sudden surge of the demand as well as the raw material. Manpower and factory accessibility are other factors as most of the country practise social distance through restriction movement order or completely lock down the town. To overcome this problem, rapid prototyping tools such as 3D printing and laser cutting methods are the promising method in producing the medical shields for our medical frontliner in battling the Covid-19 outbreak in Malaysia. To keep this in mind that this effort should be an alternative or interim method while waiting for actual PPE to arrive. With this grant and contribution from various parties (NCWO/Faculty member), we have produced a total of 1834 pieces of 3D printed face shield. The location of the face shield recipients are from a total of 18 hospital and health clinics.
(Manuscript received: 15 September 2021 | Accepted: 17 May 2022 | Published: 8 July 2022)
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