Maher Daoudi , Oxikit Founder interview
Oxikit founder Maher Daoudi by his revolutionary concept of oxygen concentrators has played a key role in solving the suffering of masses due to ragging pandemic of Coronavirus. He is a social entrepreneur of par excellence.
In an exclusive interview with the News Kashmir, he talks to Rameez Makhdoomi and Farzana Mumtaz.
Was the suffering of masses throughout world due to covid reason behind oxikit happening ?I got started based on data analysis very early in the first wave itself. When the pandemic hit Wuhan and steadily impacted badly USA too. I am sort of Polymath looking into several fields. I saw we initially had much focus on ventilators which is mechnical incubation and often chances of death of patient are more than 80 percent. What I realised that oxygen is main component and seventy to eighty percent patients going to hospital require oxygen and putting them straightway on ventilator or incubator means killing them . I saw oxygen as huge area was missed , which is main life saver in case of Coronavirus especially high flow of oxygen .
I coordinated with friends including entrepreneurs and Doctors including from the Kaiser Permanente especially chief of Residency Dr.Ted O’Connell and we reached a definite conclusion that oxygen is the focus we should have . Oxygen was thought a good cure and proved to be boon for the critically ill patients due to covid . Much of the deaths occured due to lack of access to concentrated oxygen in Covid waves .How did oxikit develop ?We need to remeber that oxygen demand in all hospitals in all parts of USA and other parts of the world demand was huge ,and patients were hurdled like anything. Problem with hospitals we have oxygen coming through holes and they got messed up when the demand was huge and it happened in USA, India and many other areas. We also discovered thus need of developing high flow oxygen in terms of LPMs as they had low and unimpressive LPM. With my uncle who works in NASA and some friends we coordinated to make a system from PVC pipes and other stuff of hardware to develop high flow coordinated oxygen cylinders to save lives .We put videos on online platforms especially YouTube to help all . Our oxygen concentrator mechanism overcame the drawback of low flow maximum 10 lpm oxygen to 20 ,30 ,40 etc according to patient needs . Once we put videos we got tremendous response especially during second wave in India ,me and Tata Consultancy CEO Amit Sharma did a session and they called me for 90 minute session . All the orders came to our high flow oxygen concentrators and I am in India since past six months , now in Kashmir for vacation . It have seen sleepless times . Me and other engineers have always been helping people how to build these machines as oxygen has become biggest thing in this time of pandemic .How have you felt in Kashmir?Kashmir is a gorgeous places and hand made stuff made here is excellent . The weaving here especially codes of it are remarkable and from woodcraft to other crafts if excellent here .How far has been support from the Governments of world ?The most of help has come from the private professionals and sector like the Tata Consulting engineering . You know that Government channels take time and our movement Pillar Tribe is about local building capacity of oxygen .Your project has been life saving, your take ?Definitely in many places it has and is saving human lives that is biggest contribution of oxikit . We as humans need to build locally things and oxikit has greatly contributed to it .Before we started it was 5 LPM machines which was useless , the patients need at least 15 LPM . We had to develop a modular system of the oxygen concentrator to provide the highest flow according to the patient’s needs . And we have saved innumerable patients with our high flow modular oxygen concentrator system via blocks and a coordinated system .By filtering the nitrogen out of the air, the concentrator provides oxygen at 90% or higher purity, at a flow of up to 25 liters per minute.Is oxygen now the biggest thing for health sector ?Yes oxygen has always been the biggest thing be it a common disease like Pneumonia or the pandemic. World needs to invest in oxygen to make efficient health care systems .
