VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

To help overcome the Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia, four students from the Department of Shipping Engineering at the November 10 Institute of Technology (ITS) who joined the Doa Ibu Team successfully innovated a transporter ship for medical services. This innovation was the highest achievement in the Covid-19 Innovative and Inspirational Application Competition (LAI2) by winning the 1st place in the Transporter Ship sub-competition. The four students: Michael Wei, Haritz Azzarie, Novi Anggia, and Fadilla Rafiansyah Anwar initiated the idea of converting the semi-hospital pioneer ship. This innovation is a conversion design of the pioneering ship named KM Sabuk Nusantara 99.

Michael revealed that the idea came from the lack of facilities to handle Covid-19 patients, and the availability of several vessels functioning for hospitals. Based on these two things, the idea of converting pioneer ships equipped with medical facilities emerged. This ship conversion is to short the production of a large number of ships. According to Michael, not all parts of the ship were converted, so the ship still has the functions as passenger carriers and logistics.

The conversion was only half of the main deck and crew deck. For the main deck, half of the passenger area with 236 cubic meters was converted. It is used as the patient rooms, medical waste treatment rooms, oxygen rooms, bedrooms for nurses and doctors, and other needs related to the handling of the Covid-19. While for the crew deck, the first-class rooms were converted into embarkation access. Michael added that another innovation is the Covid-19 handling room partition, so other rooms on the pioneer ship were not contaminated. In addition, the application of Negative Room Pressure, which is integrated with the High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter is to ensure that other rooms are safe. Michael also said the excellence of this innovation is in the conversion of pioneering ships so that the ship's construction time could be cut short and minimize costs. But it is still considering an effective, efficient, and ergonomic design based on several reference designs from hospitals, and also other treatment facilities on land or ships.