Madhya Pradesh: Inventor Cardiologist bags patent for suicide preventing ceiling fan

Costing no more than Rs 500; that too will come down if commercially produced on a large scale; this little device, which has nothing to do with the doctor’s profession; could be a breakthrough in suicide prevention.

Jabalpur: Struck with an incident where an adolescent boy ended his life by hanging to a ceiling fan; a senior cardiologist, Dr Ravi Shankar Sharma; inspired by the basic whistle pressure released system in pressure cooker, went on to design an extraordinary device which will hopefully decline such cases where the most frequent method of committing suicide- ceiling fans are used.

While Dr Sharma, who is currently posted as a professor in Government Medical College in Jabalpur; had invented the ‘Suicide Prevention Device’ for ceiling fans six years ago, but got the patent for his innovation recently on August 1, 2019, by Intellectual Property of India.

Costing no more than Rs 500; that too will come down if commercially produced on a large scale; this little device, which has nothing to do with the doctor’s profession; could be a breakthrough in suicide prevention.

The device has a hollow metal tube inside the fan's shaft to which the motor and blades are attached. Hinged to the shaft are four heavy springs designed to take an additional weight of 25 kg besides the motor and the blades. The moment the weight limit exceeds, the springs uncoils, leading to a soft landing of the person without stretching of the neck or straining the noose, explained Dr Sharma while describing the mechanism behind this device.

He has also attached a siren which starts blaring on shaft displacement. This will alert the persons present nearby.

“I am also making an upgrade in the device and now apart from a soft landing and siren going off, the device will also send alerts on the mobile phones of the concerning people and authorities with this upgrade,” Sharma informed TOI.

Dr Sharma calls his fan "a simple contraption rigged up by using plain common sense." Speaking to TOI on the reason behind the idea, Dr Sharma mentioned the incident where the boy had committed suicide. “His inconsolable father kept cursing the day he replaced the table fan with a ceiling fan in his room,” he shared.

That incident got Dr Sharma thinking on the safety features that could somehow be put in the ceiling fan so it can't be used as a tool of death.  A week of hard thinking and several trips to the welders and mechanics later, the doctor came up with an innovative way.

“My intention was not monetary benefit, but government should take steps and make it mandatory for fan manufacturers, like the pressure release valve is mandatory in pressure cookers,” he stressed.

Dr RS Sharma, first DM Cardiology in entire Madhya Pradesh completed his studies from the premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

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