So, the bird flu stikes and the hospitals fill up. Your spouse/child/person who owes you lots of money is deathly sick and can't breath. Time to make your own ventilator.

-Blast

And what would one do with this ventilator contraption if they built it? Only useful if you are trained to intubate and have various sizes of tubes (ET) handy. A laryngoscope would be nice too, but you can intubate by feel - sometimes - if you're trained adequately. Supplemental O2 should be used as well. Not to mention addressing the underlying problem in the first place. A vent is supportive therapy, it won't cure things. Chances are if you're sick enough to require a vent, you're not going to just recover on your own.

+1 to all that haertig said but this statement especially.

It is kinda cool that this guy took the initiative to design and build this thing. I had a former medic student who built a defibrillator as project in electrical engineering school, he would never use the one he made but it was still a great project. I did learned more about HOW a defibrillator worked from him then anyone else.

Reading the website you'll see that this equipment is to be used in a hospital by qualified people. According to a government study, there won't be enough ventilators available if a bird flu type scenerio occurs. Cobbling together a few more from off-the-shelf equipment will give the hospitals more resources.

I can see where my initial post suggests a untrained, unequipped person should make one of these. In reality, a doubt anyone who isn't trained in their use would spend the time/money to build such a thing.

-Blast

So where are the plans for a room ventilator-thing, to keep nasties like Bird Flu, Anthrax, Rabies and other cooties out?

Can we make a CO2 scrubber like in "Apollo 13"?

Sue