IDF to supply hospitals with makeshift ventilators

The Israel Defense Forces announces it will begin delivering makeshift ventilators to hospitals beginning next week in a bid to address potential shortages of the machines, which are needed to treat coronavirus patients.

These jury-rigged ventilators were created out of existing CPAP machines — devices that are used to regulate breathing but that lack the monitoring capabilities that ventilators have — as part of an initiative by Military Intelligence’s elite Unit 81 dubbed “Air to Breathe.”

The head of the project — who for security reasons can only be identified by his rank and first Hebrew letter of his name, Maj. Samech — says a hundred machines will be delivered to the Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv on Sunday, followed by hundreds more to hospitals across the country.

Samech says one of the primary benefits of his improvised devices is the cost, which he says is “far, far cheaper” than that of proper ventilators, while still being able to perform the necessary functions to help coronavirus patients.

“These machines of ours are the primary alternative in case of a flood of patients in hospitals who need to be put on ventilators, beyond the number of machines available today,” says Dr. Amit Zabtani of Sheba Medical Center, who assisted in the project.

— Judah Ari Gross