Afghan All-Girls Robotics Team Builds Ventilator For COVID-19 Patients

The number of coronavirus patients are on the rise in Afghanistan and so far 7 deaths have been recorded.  
“The idea of these machines is that we use them for emergency cases, when there are no professional ventilators. The thing in Afghanistan is, we don’t have enough ventilators, but that’s the case for many other countries, even Italy or New York.
“If we don’t have access to anything professional we can use these ones,” said Roya Mahboob in an interview with The National. 
The team attracted international attention in 2017 when the US government briefly denied them visa to take part in a robotics competition. Months after they won a silver medal at a top festival in Europe. The team had only two weeks to build its robot as a shipment of parts was delayed. 
The group members are young teenage Afghan girls who hail from the city of Herat. 
Roya Mahboob, the first female CEO of a tech company in Afghanistan, is one of the team’s sponsors. In 2013 TIME Magazine named one of the 100 most influential people of year.