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Received September 12, 2020, replied October 24, 2020, date of publication October 27, 2020

Commentary/Letter to the Editor of the Global CE 
Journal 

By B. M. Gamble1, Francoise Mailhot2, R. Rivas3, S. Rabbani4, M. Secca5, M. Cheng6 

1 Alumni of Toronto University, and longtime follower of the theories of Chris Argyris and W. Edwards Deming. Several time presenter at the 
Deming Institute annual conference, Canada
2 International Development. Specialist in National and International Program Evaluations, Canada.
3 Clinical Engineering Head, Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Program, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru.
4 Department of Biomedical Physics and Technology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
5 Mozambique
6 Ottawa Creative Thinking Group, Canada.

Dear Editor,

It is clear that potential COVID pandemics will be recurring events and the use of PPE is basic and vital. Everyone 
will need such simple devices to protect themselves and others. The consequence of no PPE protection could be di-
sastrous for global health! 

Stockpiling PPE is not for everyone. Healthcare facilities in low-resources countries have limited PPE supplies. 
Furthermore, transportation and distribution across the country can be problematic in rural areas. Home-made PPE 
is the most practical solution but this needs effective global efforts to educate and guide global populations. 

In the past 3 months, the IFMBE/CED, in collaboration with WHO and other professionals, has conducted an ex-
cellent series of webinars to inform the world about medical devices in combating the COVID-19 pandemic bringing 
invaluable information for global healthcare. We wonder if IFMBE/CED would pioneer another important initiative 
with WHO to advocate and co-ordinate the resources from different organizations and individual professionals to 
create a manual on home-made PPEs and basic knowledge on cleaning and sterilization so that laypersons can make 
PPE to protect themselves and others. A highly successful public health education publication Where There Is No Doc-
tors1 is an example. 

Preventing SARS and other related diseases are a global problem that currently relies mainly on isolated and scat-
tered national solutions. It is urgent that international organizations such as IFMBE and WHO provide trusted advice 
to countries worldwide to create a global protection-sensitive culture against pandemics.  

REFERENCE

1. Burma/Myanmar Library. Where There Is No Doctor. Author: 2011. Available at: https://www.burmalibrary.org/
docs12/Where_there_is_no_doctor-2011(en)-red.pdf

This Letter is dedicated to Brian Gamble, deceased on July 31st at the age of 88. Brian was a most well informed and open-minded internationalist I 
have known. Michael Cheng

Editor’s answer:

Dear Dr. Cheng,

Thank you for deciding to address your concerns and the proposed initiative to the Global Clinical Engineering 
Journal. Although it does not comply the typical material that we have published, after reviewing your letter to the 
editor carefully, we have decided to publish it due to its international scope and the offering of potential involvement 
for clinical engineers from around the world.

While you are making specific conclusions (i.e., pandemic will be recurring events, PPE in limited supply, the suc-
cess of public health education via a book) no support has been offered to substantiate these. Nevertheless, we would 
like to encourage you to further explore the optimal route to assemble expert authors and to write your proposed 
manual. We see value in such collaboration especially if it will be sensitive to local availability of resources and in a 
format that accommodates worldwide access such as through Internet tools. 

We encourage you to pursue this idea.

Respectfully,
Dr. Yadin David

Copyright © 2021. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY): Creative Commons - Attribu-
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are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is 

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