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Elham Mansoori, member of Afghan Dreamers, an all-girls robotics team in Afghanistan, works on their prototype of a ventilator. The Digital Citizen Fund hide caption

In Afghanistan, a group of teenage girls are trying to build a mechanized, hand-operated ventilator for coronavirus patients, using a design from M.I.T. and parts from old Toyota Corollas.

It sounds like an impossible dream, but then again, the all-girls robotics team in question is called the "Afghan Dreamers." Living a country where two-thirds of adolescent girls cannot read or write, they're used to overcoming challenges.

The team of some dozen girls aged 15 to 17 was formed three years ago by Roya Mahboob, an Afghan tech entrepreneur who heads the Digital Citizen Fund, a group that runs classes for girls in STEM and robotics and oversees and funds the Afghan Dreamers. "I'm really proud of these young girls [who are] feeling that they have to help their community," says Mahboob. "It's amazing and hopeful for the future of Afghanistan."

The virus most likely entered the country in early March as hundreds of thousands of Afghan workers fled the coronavirus outbreak in neighboring Iran. They came through the western province of Herat, where the Afghan Dreamers live.

In fighting the pandemic, Afghanistan is at a disadvantage."You are talking about a country that is now struck by COVID-19, which comes on top of ongoing war and abject poverty," says Toby Lanzer, the humanitarian coordinator for U.N. agencies working in Afghanistan.

The country only has capacity to test 1,000 people a day, so the number of confirmed cases, at over 7,000 is considered an undercount, says Lanzer. And there's only about 200 working ventilators for a country of 35 million people, he estimates.

To deal with the shortfall, on March 26, the then-governor [he has since stepped down] of Herat, Abdul Qayoum Rahimi, gathered two doctors, university graduates, local industrialists and the Afghan Dreamers.

The doctors presented them with a challenge: to help mechanize their hand-operated ventilators, also known as bag-valve-masks. This type of ventilator is a large inflatable bag attached to a mask that slips over the nose and mouth. A health worker manually squeezes the bag to get air into the lungs. They're quite cheap and common they're used in ambulances and in emergency care to help patients breathe until they can be ventilated on a machine.

Officials feared there would not be enough health workers to hand-operate the equipment in the event of an outbreak. They hoped the Afghan Dreamers could build a prototype of a mechanized ventilator that could be replicated and mass produced, says Mahboob.

And amid a global demand, officials also worried that impoverished Afghanistan could not compete with wealthy countries to buy fully automated ventilators typically used in ICU rooms.

A ventilator typically costs around $50,000, says Douglas Chin, a Harvard-educated surgeon who has been helping the Afghan Dreamers with their prototype. By comparison, he says, producing a mechanized hand-operated ventilator could cost around $500.

Elham Mansori, Florence Poya, Nahida Khajazadeh and Somaya Farooqi, members of the Afghan Dreamers, are building a mechanized version of the hand-operated ventilator. The Digital Citizen Fund hide caption

Elham Mansori, Florence Poya, Nahida Khajazadeh and Somaya Farooqi, members of the Afghan Dreamers, are building a mechanized version of the hand-operated ventilator.

After the meeting with the governor, a team of four Afghan Dreamers began looking online for open-source design ventilators. Mahboob and Somaya Farooqi, the 17-year-old team captain, came across a design released by MIT for a low-cost, low-tech ventilator called the MIT E-Vent.

"They found us," says Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, whose team released the design in March.

The design is deliberately low-tech so it can be replicated using locally sourced products around the world. For instance, it calls for installing a microprocessor, usually included in robotics kits for kids and teens. And it can be built out of widely available machine parts.

The MIT team on their website says their design "cannot replace an FDA-approved ICU ventilator in terms of functionality, flexibility and clinical efficacy" but that it could help in "life-or-death situations where there is no other option."

Slocum estimates about a dozen teams, from places as diverse as Chile to Iran are building ventilators using the design. The Afghan Dreamers, he says, is the only all-female team he is aware of, and they come from the poorest country.

They were also the first to figure out that windshield wiper motors could be finagled into powering a working ventilator.

"So I just hope no one gets mad at us, or them, in particular when the rainy season comes and they go to their car and there's no wipers," says Slocum, jokingly.

The Afghan Dreamers have had a number of challenges while building the prototype. For one, they're working while fasting it's the Muslim month of Ramadan. They also have to keep safe amid the pandemic, says Farooqi. "Each of us work on a separate part of the ventilator. When we get together, we wear masks and gloves."

A prototype of the Afghan Dreamers' ventilator. Raw materials included car parts from Toyota Corollas. The Digital Citizen Fund hide caption

And because Herat is largely shut down due to COVID, Farooqi says the team had to be ingenious about sourcing parts. "Most of the material we are using is actually from Toyota Corolla car parts" from nearby secondhand markets, such as the windshield wipers, a gear box and motor, along with some motorbike parts.

Corollas are a common type of car in Afghanistan, so if this prototype works, the ventilator should be cheap and easy to replicate using parts likely to be available at car shops, says Mahboob.

The girls are now trying to get the machine to be able to sense a patient's breathing pattern and adjust the amount of air they get accordingly.

For the ventilator to do that, the team needs two parts a "pressure transducer" a sensor that converts pressure measurements from breath into electrical signals and a microprocessor to process those signals into a pump of air.

Both parts cost about $50 each but the team can't source them locally or ship them into Afghanistan. There is no mail service that the women can access. And so six weeks into building their ventilator, the women are now trying to find a way get these last parts.

Some health officials in Afghanistan are doubtful that the girls will succeed. "We appreciate this idea," says Muhammad Rafiq Sherzai, spokesman for the Herat Public Health Department. But he notes the need to have the machines approved by appropriate organizations.

Indeed, once the team builds a successful prototype, it has to be tested and approved by the health ministry in Herat, and then in the capital Kabul. Once they have that approval, local factories can replicate the machine.

The team is optimistic. They've overcome other hurdles.

They first came to international attention three years ago, when they were refused visas twice to enter the U.S. for a robotics competition. Many visit visas are denied because some Afghans have used them to stay in the U.S. and never return to Afghanistan.

After an international outcry, President Donald Trump intervened and let them in.

They made it to the competition and even won an award for courage for their can-do attitude under difficult circumstances.

"That award was a result of our hard work. And it's made us work even harder," says Farooqi. Speaking of the ventilator her team is building, she adds, "even if it saves just one patient's life, I'll be happy.

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Afghan Girls Robotics Team Aims To Build Low-Tech, Low-Cost Ventilator : Goats and Soda - NPR

Staff Sergeant Ronald Shurer II, who received the Medal of Honor, the nations highest military decoration, for braving heavy gunfire to save lives in the war in Afghanistan, died on May 14 at a hospital in Washington. He was 41.

His wife, Miranda Shurer, said the cause was lung cancer, which was diagnosed three years ago.

Sergeant Shurer was a senior medic in the Army Special Forces on April 6, 2008, when 15 American troops and about 100 Afghan commandos set out on a mission in the Shok Valley, a remote, mountainous part of Nuristan Province in eastern Afghanistan.

According to an Army account, he and his team were making their way through the valley when they came under withering machine-gun and sniper fire and were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades. The troops had found cover when Sergeant Shurer heard a call for help from another team up ahead that had taken casualties and was pinned down. He then ran up a steep mountainside through heavy fire to reach them, stopping on the way to treat a wounded soldier.

Fighting his way across several hundred yards, killing Afghan insurgents along the way, he reached the hemmed-in team and treated four critically wounded U.S. soldiers and 10 wounded Afghan commandos, the Army said.

It definitely felt that I was going to die, Sergeant Shurer said in an account on the Armys website in 2018. I just said a prayer and asked that my wife and son would be OK with what was going to happen. Then I just went back to work to continually re-triage everyone.

At one point another American sergeant was knocked to the ground when a snipers bullet struck his body armor. Sergeant Shurer rushed to his side. The sergeant was not hurt, but as he was being helped up another bullet struck his left arm and bounced off Sergeant Shurers helmet.

It felt like Id been hit in the head with a baseball bat, he said.

He helped evacuate the wounded soldiers, and as they were lowered down the mountainside with slings improvised out of nylon webbing, he used his body to shield them from fire. After they were loaded into a helicopter, he went back up the mountain to continue to fight.

Ronald J. Shurer II was born on Dec. 7, 1978, in Fairbanks, Alaska. His mother and father served in the Air Force and were moved about the country. He lived in Illinois and Idaho before they were posted to McChord Air Force Base, south of Tacoma, Wash.

He attended Governor John R. Rogers High School in Puyallup, Wash., where he was on the swim team and took part in triathlons. He earned a bachelors degree in business economics from Washington State University and was studying for a masters degree there before he enlisted a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He met Miranda Lantzwere online as he was going through Special Forces training, and they married.

He was promoted to staff sergeant in 2006 and served in Afghanistan from November 2007 to May 2008. After his discharge, Sergeant Shurer worked for the Secret Service as a special agent in Phoenix before joining the services Counter Assault Team. He was assigned to the Special Operations Division in 2014.

Sergeant Shurer also received a Silver Star, a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. President Trump upgraded his Silver Star to the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony in 2018.

In addition to his wife, Sergeant Shurers survivors include two sons.

Im not a hero, he said in 2018. I just happened to be the medic there that day. The guys trusted me to help them, and I was going to do everything I could not to let them down.

The New York Times contributed reporting.

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Ronald Shurer II, Cited for Bravery in Afghanistan, Dies at 41 - The New York Times

Hawa Gul, 42, is a mother of seven children. She lives in Kohak village of Farah district in the western Farah province of Afghanistan, where FAO has recently assisted the most vulnerable households, specifically women-headed households, with a backyard poultry support intervention through the generous contribution of OFDA/USAID. The aim of this intervention was to provide home-based income opportunities for vulnerable women as well as sustain nutrition and food security of the vulnerable farmers who are on the brink of food insecurity as well as adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. FAO is supporting and working with the Government of Afghanistan to find alternative ways to address the needs of the most vulnerable smallholder farmers and landless households who are in dire need of assistance during this pandemic.

Hawa Gul takes care of her children alone as her husband is retired and is unable to support the family. I mainly relied on livestock-based livelihoods in order to feed my family. Keeping goats was the only source of income I had in recent years, and I used to manage all the requirements of my family through the sale of goat milk. However, the drought of 2018 negatively affected our livelihoods. My livestock become weak and the milk production reduced day by day due to the dried pasture and the high price of the animal feed in the market, which hindered me from providing proper feed for my livestock, explains Hawa Gul. She was also keeping a few chickens, but the number was not enough and, egg production was insufficient even for her family consumption. I ended up selling several heads of my livestock, and I went through a really difficult period that time, explains Hawa Gul further. Smallholder families like Hawa Gul are vulnerable to various shocks ranging from natural hazards to market fluctuations and animal diseases. The current COVID-19 pandemic has impacted her familys livelihood even before they could fully recover from the adverse impacts of the 2018 drought.

Thanks to OFDA/USAID, FAO recently supported her with a poultry input package that has enabled her to enhance her familys livelihood, food security and nutrition. Given the fact that there are lot of cultural barriers particularly for the women in Afghanistan to participate in other livelihood support activities, this intervention has provided access to nutritious food and home-based income opportunities for women through increased home consumption of eggs and the sale of surplus eggs in the market. I cannot explain how much happiness the poultry package I received from FAO has brought back to my family. Its a good home-based source of income, and I earn AFN 150 (around USD 2) from the sale of eggs everyday. I expect to increase this amount in the future, exclaims Hawa Gul.

This intervention is a part of FAOs Support to drought-affected and food insecure farming families. One of the activities under this project is to support around 1 500 vulnerable and food insecure households in three provinces (Kunar, Daykundi, and Farah) with poultry inputs. Each household received 20 pullets at 16 weeks of age with all necessary vaccinations along with 100 kg of compound poultry layer feed, two polyethylene drinkers and feeders, and essential construction materials for cooping. FAO also provided a leaflet with hotline numbers that provide technical support on backyard poultry to the farmers when needed. This intervention is instrumental in supporting vulnerable families to also minimize the adverse economic impacts of COVID-19 by having ready access to cash-flow/income when employment opportunities are reduced and household purchasing power is diminished. Despite the restrictions imposed by the response to COVID-19, FAO is committed to supporting the most vulnerable farmers with emergency and livelihood assistance while strictly following the precautionary measures laid out by WHO and the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan to safeguard the lives of beneficiaries and FAO staff.

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From vulnerability to resilience in Afghanistan: Hawa Gul's story of diversified livelihood and increased income due to FAO's poultry intervention...

The Ministry of Public Health on Friday said 542 new positive cases of COVID-19 were registered over the past 24 hours --bringing the total positive cases to 9,216.

The number of total known active cases in Afghanistan is 7,961, said the MoPH.

According to the Health Ministry, 12 people lost their lives over the past 24 hours and 58 more recovered. The known death toll from the coronavirus is now 205.

The total number of recoveries is 993.

Kabul is a hotspot for the virus, with 316 reported cases in the past twenty-four hours.

The new cases, according to the ministry, were reported in Kabul (316), Herat (47), Nangarhar (24), Takhar (23), Baghlan (23), Balkh (19), Kunar (18), Laghman (15), Farah (15), Ghazni (13), Paktia (5), Wardak (3), Logar (1), Kunduz (4), Panjshir (8), Kapisa (1), Daikundi (5) and Nuristan (2).

So far, 27,889 people have been tested in the country.

The number of deaths from COVID-19 globally is more than 333,032 and the global coronavirus cases are not 5,107,572, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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Over 9000 Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in Afghanistan - TOLOnews

KABUL, Afghanistan The morning was not yet over, but already it felt as if the very cycle of life in Afghanistan was under assault, with attacks at a maternity ward and a funeral serving as grim reminders that its people are in peril from cradle to grave.

First, three militants stormed a hospital in Kabul soon after 10 a.m. on Tuesday, shooting new mothers dead before the newborns in their arms had even seen the light outside the hospital. At least 15 people were killed inside the hospital mothers, babies, medical workers, and one police officer.

As security forces were scrambling in Kabul, about a hundred miles to the east, in the province of Nangarhar, a suicide bomber walked into the funeral for a local police commander. As hundreds of locals queued in front of the body for the final prayer, the bomber detonated his explosives not far from the corpse.

The commander, 59, who had survived many battles and attacks, had died of a heart attack. Now his body was riddled with shrapnel, too. The explosion killed at least 25 and wounded 68 others.

Violent death here is so frequent, and so scattered, that an accurate count is an impossible task. But by dusk on Tuesday, when the reported deaths of the day from all sides had been tallied, the Afghan war had most likely taken 100 lives.

Of course, the night brings more death and the next day more tallying.

What is crushing Afghans is not just the sheer brutality of the attacks with newborn babies soaked in blood and deprived of mothers before they have even gotten a name, but the failure of anything to bring a reprieve.

The United States and the Taliban signed a preliminary peace agreement in February that was supposed to have brought the two-decade war closer to an end. Instead, the insurgents have only cranked up attacks around the country, inflicting heavy casualties on Afghan forces with dozens killed every day.

The peace deal has been stuck in a prisoner exchange that was supposed to unlock direct negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban to plan for power-sharing after the United States withdraws its remaining troops. The Taliban are insisting on the release of up to 5,000 of their prisoners before considering any other moves.

An Afghan group affiliated with the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacking the funeral. But no group has claimed responsibility for attacking the hospital. The Taliban, in a statement, denied that they were behind it. But coming after weeks of intensifying Taliban attacks, the government blamed the group.

And in a sign that any momentum toward peace was dissipating, President Ashraf Ghani ordered Afghan forces to abandon the active defense posture they had been in since the signing of the U.S.-Taliban agreement and return to offensive attacks against the insurgents.

The Taliban, with the stoking of foreigners, have intensified the war and are shedding Afghan blood, Mr. Ghani said in an address to the nation at the end of the bloody day. Dont see our invitation for peace and a cease-fire as our weakness, but as deep respect to the demand and will of the people.

Deborah Lyons, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, condemned the hospital assault. Who attacks newborn babies and new mothers? Who does this? she said on Twitter. The most innocent of innocents, a baby! Why? Cruelty has no followers from humanity.

The insurgents have refused even calls for a humanitarian cease-fire to allow the country to combat the rapidly spreading coronavirus, a call Mr. Ghani repeated in his address. Afghanistan has officially recorded about 5,000 cases of Covid-19, but officials warn that the spread is most likely much wider.

Between the daily toll of the war and the virus, the countrys health resources are stretched thin. With 80 percent of the population living just barely above the poverty line, there is fear that the economic shock waves of the pandemic could bring starvation.

On Tuesday, the health system itself came into the cross-hairs.

Today, my doctor, my medical personnel, the poor mother who is in labor, are left in chaos the doctor that is there to rescue her is covered in blood and falls next to her bed, said Wahid Majrooh, the deputy minister of health.

The attack in Kabul, the capital, targeted a 100-bed hospital in the western part of the city, a largely Shiite area often hit by Islamic State bombers.

The hospital is known for its large maternity ward, which is supported by Doctors Without Borders. During the five-hour operation to kill the three assailants, Afghan special forces were seen rescuing newborn babies. NATO troops were also seen at the site.

Crowds gathered outside the hospital and emotions ran high as they saw babies soaked in blood. A security official coming out of the hospital showed reporters pictures of the devastation inside the ward: mothers shot as they had tried to hide under a bed, a female nurse prostrate in blood, one woman still clinging to her newborn.

She was dead, but the baby was alive, the official said.

The relatives of one woman who had given birth at dawn were trying to get news. The womans brother wailed and twisted in pain as other relatives tried to calm him. Oh, God, oh God, was all he could say as he kept crying.

She had given birth already when the suicide bombers entered, said Rafiullah, the womans brother in law.

A community elder came out of the hospital with a list of a dozen newborns who had been evacuated to other hospitals. As he read the names of their mothers these had been written on pieces of tape on the babies stomachs, he said and the names of the hospitals the babies had been sent to, a man from the anxious crowd asked about the mothers.

Fifteen martyred mothers, said the community elder, Abdul Hadi. Their bodies are in the ambulances being evacuated now. We put them in body bags.

The bombing in Nangarhar Province targeted the funeral of Sheikh Akram, a local police commander. About 500 people had gathered at a large field in Khewa district for the final prayer, and a grave had been dug for him just across the road.

Naeem Jan Naeem, an eyewitness, said the imam had just asked people to line up and announced the beginning of the prayer when a huge blast was heard and a fire erupted in the front of the crowd.

The body of Sheikh Akram was close to the explosion, Mr. Naeem said. There was shooting after the explosion, too his face and his chest had shrapnel wounds.

His body was wounded after he had died.

Najim Rahim contributed reporting from Kabul, and Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad.

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From Maternity Ward to Cemetery, a Morning of Murder in Afghanistan - The New York Times