Mask Banao wants everyone to make homemade masks to fight coronavirus.

Byline: NATASHA UDERANI

What started as a small idea has spawned into a team of over 35 Pakistani students/professionals from 8 countries

The world as we know it, has ceased to exist. Over 280,000 people have lost their lives due to the novel coronavirus. And right now, the lives of 220 million Pakistanis are at stake.

The current pandemic has posed a confusing dilemma for all of us. Not only are we responsible for taking care of our own lives but of those around us as well. Given that Covid-19 may be asymptomatic for some while being deadly for others, it is upon each individual to make sure that they are not responsible for transmitting this dangerous virus to another individual.

At the forefront have been doctors in constant turmoil over the lack of protective equipment being provided to them. In a country with an underdeveloped healthcare system and high population density where a virus as such can and is spreading rapidly, prevention is the best tool in our arsenal.

N95 masks started creating buzz soon after the first cases emerged. Studies have shown that an effective way to reduce transmission probability per contact is through wearing masks in public (with cloth masks being an effective form of source control).

While there was a time you could find these masks readily available on sites like Daraz for cheap rates, prices have now skyrocketed; stockpiling led to an acute shortage.

Keeping this new reality in mind, a group of students have made it their mission to make mass mask production the new normal for Pakistan.

What is Mask Banao?

Mask Banao is a social initiative that has made it its mission to educate people all over Pakistan to create masks at home.

The idea came into being when Sualeh Asif, an MIT student worked with a predictive modelling team at Oxford to put the pandemic trajectory for Pakistan in perspective. The results unsettled him as he saw how Pakistan's fragile medical ecosystem was not ready for the pandemic to reach its peak.

What started as a small idea has spawned into a global network with a team of over 35 students and professionals from eight countries. The unit has made it their aim to convince every neighbourhood and household in Pakistan to create a mask from the comfort of their own home.

You can easily make an effective cloth mask from household materials and play your part in flattening the curve.

'While working with an international team at Oxford, it became pretty clear to me that masks were the...

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