KUALA LUMPUR:Malaysia hospitals will receive a donation of up to RM2 million worth of Alpha ventilators, supporting patients with severe respiratory distress in intensive care unit (ICU) wards.

The ventilators will be sent to hospitals in states where infection and hospitalisation rates are high, the first being Hospital Selayang in Selangor.

The announcement was made via a statement by Advanced MedTech Holdings, a global medical technology leader, based in Singapore.

The donation is part of the company's Billion Breath Project, aiming to support healthcare workers in the fight against COVID-19.

The Alpha ventilator enables a small team of healthcare professionals to monitor and adjust the settings for a large number of ventilated patients remotely via an online dashboard.

This reduces the need for caregivers to enter in and out of ICU wards to manually adjust ventilator settings, reducing the risk of infection.

The initiative has already donated nearly RM3 million in ventilators to hospitals in Indonesia, Myanmar and India.

-- BERNAMA