Roya Mahboob

AR You are involved with a number of design programmes that are seeking solutions to some of the problems posed by the pandemic. Could you tell us about them, starting with the Afghan Dreamers’ emergency ventilator design project?

RM At the end of March, Abdul Qayoum Rahimi, then-governor of [the north-western Afghan province of] herāt, put out a design challenge because there were very few ventilators in the region, which had a large number of cases of coronavirus. He was talking with doctors in Herāt, who were aware that the situation might be out of control. So, they put out a challenge to design open-source emergency ventilators and asked universities, manufacturers and the Afghan Dreamers to participate. Five members of our team responded to the call and started to build the ventilators.

AR As many of the world’s most powerful and well-capitalised manufacturers have discovered, it is incredibly difficult to design and build emergency ventilators. Not only do the Afghan Dreamers face a tough design challenge, they are tackling it in deeply difficult conditions having begun under lockdown. What extra levels of difficulty has this added?

RM When the Afghan Dreamers started working on the ventilators, there was a lockdown in herāt with many restrictions. The shops had closed, and it was a big challenge to find parts as we