Red tape is preventing local company from churning out ventilators – Iain Ambler

The search for ventilators that have become such a scarce commodity during the coronavirus pandemic, as they are critically important for patients who land in intensive care units with breathing problems, has been described as 'a hunt for a dodo'. Anaesthetists in South Africa have recently been informed that their ventilators may be needed when Covid-19 reaches a peak so there is clearly a shortage in South Africa as well. It has prompted a mechatronic company, Clifford Welding who have made ventilators in the past but stopped production because they refused to pay bribes to corrupt officials, to improve their initial design and software, and come up with an updated version of their original product. But despite help from ANC officials and the Industrial Development Corporation; they have run into red tape with delays at Customs at OR Tambo Airport and say there does not seem to be a rush from state departments to order units. The Managing Director of Clifford Welding, Iain Ambler told Alec Hogg they have had interest from overseas, but not much locally. – Linda van Tilburg

During the Easter weekend I had a conversation with Iain Ambler – who is the co-owner of a company called Clifford Engineering – and it was a fascinating interview. It went pretty viral. Many people were interested in it – not least – because to get a respirator nowadays, it's like – in the Business for South Africa press conference that I attended a couple of weeks ago – Stavros Nicolaou from Aspen said it was like trying to hunt a dodo – they are so rare. And with Iain's company – with Clifford Engineering – they actually produced one (many of them are still in use) but they stopped producing them in 2003 because of corruption. Of course, with what's happening now – Iain's dusting off the blueprints, he said he was prepared to give those blueprints to anybody else, they would like to start producing them again. I thought it would be a good idea to bring him on to the show today and you guys can also ping a few questions at him just to find out how things have developed. Iain, I hope you can hear us now. Can you just bring us up to date with what the response has been to the interview that we had?

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