By Nancy Nais
KUCHING, March 29: A group of friends decided to make use of their skills and free time from the Movement Order Control (MCO) into good use by manufacturing face shields to protect health professionals in the city.
Calling themselves the Kuching 3D Makers’ Group, seven of them; Geoffrey Lee, Akmal Hakim Sazali, Dalvin Chung, Sim Siang Kwang, Mohd Nazirul, Pung Tiong Seng and Annabelle Chai managed to produce 30 sets of 3D-printed face shields, which was distributed to medical professionals at the Covid-19 Test Centre at the Youth and Sports Centre here this morning.
They are one of the many group of volunteers racing to help provide medical professionals and frontliners the gear they need to safely combat the virus and also address the mask shortage faced nationwide.
“This is very important. In order for us to defeat the virus, we have to help keep our medical personnel safe. We decided to take the initiative to help them out after reading DayakDaily’s report that there are not enough face shields used by health personnel at the sports centre here,” Lee said, after handling over the 3D face shield to medical personnel.
The team has been working around the clock since last week and willing help out to produce the shield during this trying time.
The face shields are to be worn over the face masks. It is being used as a second layer of protection over the face as the concern with the Covid-19 is the droplets, where someone actually sneeze or cough or get in the T-zone, which are the eyes, nose and mouths.
“Each face shield takes about five hours to print. This is because the type we produced are reusable, can be disinfected, the transparent sheet can be replaced without the need of punching any holes, higher and better protection for our frontliners,” he added.
Lee said the rationale for the innovation is that patients with Covid-19 experienced significant respiratory issues, resulting in coughing, so virus particles are easily spread in the fluids expelled from the patient during episodes of coughing.
“The face shield is an additional barrier between the healthcare worker and the patient and reduces the risk of viral transmission via airborne droplets,” he said.
On Friday, the group group distributed 20 face shields to the Kuching Polyclinic at Jalan Masjid, 10 to the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sarawak General Hospital (SGH), 10 to hoteliers and 20 to the police and army personnel manning the roadblocks. — DayakDaily
