THE WYKEHAM JOURNAL 2020
‘ We were trying to get hold of anyone to listen, and we got absolutely nowhere.’
The new PeRSO respirator
The team went shopping for off-theshelf parts— a fan, a filter and a battery— and within a week the prototype was built. Made with a fabric hood, and clear face visor, it had a High Efficiency Particulate Air( HEPA) filter linked to a battery-powered fan attached round the waist. With the entire face visible it made it easier to speak to patients and gave staff better protection than surgical and other masks.
Paul Elkington’ s links to Winchester start with his grandfather Monty Wright, who was Second Master, at that time not only the Headmaster’ s deputy, but also in charge of College, from 1925 to 1952. His mother was born in Chamber Court and his son is currently a student in Beloe’ s. He himself went on to study Medicine at Oxford and spent five years as a Junior Hospital Doctor during the days of the 72-hour week in London. On a year out in Zambia he discovered that while most of his patients had been diagnosed with HIV, it was TB that often killed them. From then on, studying TB became his life’ s passion. He returned to Imperial College, London, to do a PhD, investigating how TB affects the lungs, eventually moving to Southampton University to set up the TB research group there.
His pedigree as a trusted academic clinician meant that when he and the team presented the newly named‘ PeRSo’ Respirator to hospital officials just ten days after they started the project, the hospital responded by asking them if they could manufacture it on a mass scale.
It was a huge challenge. Requests for government help fell on deaf ears, according to Professor Elkington:‘ We were trying to get hold of anyone to listen, and we got absolutely nowhere.’ Once again the team went local, drawing in INDO, a lighting company with contacts in China, and Kemp Sails, to invest in production. Within the first six weeks they produced 1,000 respirators. While they sought approval from NHS
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