Architect designs cardboard beds to tackle the shortage of beds for patients with Covid-19

Rhea Shah, an architect living in Mumbai, realized that the country was experiencing a shortage of hospitals beds, in hospitals and quarantine centers, for patients with Covid-19. While quarantining in her family home, who run the Aryan Paper Mill, she had the idea of creating low-cost, disposable, cardboard beds. Together with her brother Mihir Shah, manager of the factory, they spent a week developing the prototype.

“After the constant corona updates, a general sense of despair had set in. I had made corrugated board furniture a few years ago and thought that a quickly assembled, cheap hospital bed might help to increase treatment capacity at all the hospitals coming up across the country”, Rhea explained.

The cardboard beds come in flat-pack boxes, weigh 7 kgs and can be assembled without nails, screws or adhesive tape, in under 10 minutes. When assembled, the beds can support a person that weighs up to 200 kgs. The beds are coated with a waterproof film in order to protected from liquid damage and allow the beds to be sprayed and disinfected. The main design is for a flat bed but Rhea has also designed a reclinable bed, after physicians advised her that patients with respiratory issues have difficulty in lying down.

The factory has already produced more than 15000 beds, which have been sent to several facilities around the country that have been turned into isolations wards, had have also started shipping them to other countries. The family has donated more than 1000 units and is selling them at, without profit: “We don’t want to make any profits, keeping in mind the collective crisis all of us are going through”, Rhea stated.

Adapted from: https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/soft-beds-and-hard-b...
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