Strenghtening regional ties to mitigate COVID-19 effects

Although flattening the growth curve of COVID-19 infections is the path that most countries have adopted, a team of Paraguayan professionals, composed of Dr. Carlos Torras and engineers Claudio Rojas, Diego Bentel and Roque Ardissone, decided to work on alternatives to increase hospital capacity and improve the quality of care in the health system.

In this way, the specialists designed a programmatic solution to expand the capacity of the existing hospital system, which could be materialized quickly, at a relatively low cost and with available materials in the country. The Uruguayan engineering company Ingenium participates in the project in a supportive and collaborative way, taking advantage of its contact networks and its expertise in the area.

The project consists of creating temporary hospitalization rooms attached to the existing central hospitals in Paraguayan territory, in no more than 30 days. The objective is that hospitals have up to 100 extra beds for people who require light and intermediate care. These are modular solutions, each with capacity to accommodate up to 16 persons, subdivided into spaces with 8 beds. In addition, the facilities will have nursing rooms and will be connected by a technical services corridor to the doctors' module with 36 additional beds.

"These are not high-performance constructions, nor are they intended to be permanent, but rather temporary solutions that will satisfactorily fulfill their purpose during the pandemic. The project seeks that these facilities have the best possible performance given the available materials", explained the engineer and founder of Ingenium, Facundo del Castillo.

Ingenium is a company specialized in structural engineering founded in 2011, with presence in several countries of the region and in Spain. Since 2015, it has been part of the engineering sector in Paraguay, where it has formed close ties with some clients that go beyond the strict supplier-customer relationship and with whom the company is in permanent contact.

"When we were called to make specific inquiries, we made available our capacity to collaborate on an honorary basis in the project," said del Castillo. Ingenium studied the viability of the different construction solutions and gave the project structural support. The company created a structural design with the available materials to achieve the best performance and resource optimization.

The engineer said that they did not hesitate when the proposal to collaborate with the Paraguayan project arrived. "It is not easy to find a way to contribute in this situation, but when a project of quick implementation appears, with the support of a government that adopts it and makes the funds available to execute it, an excellent opportunity arises to contribute our grain of sand. Having the opportunity to dedicate part of the work we do to this cause is a great satisfaction," he said.