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Judi Lynn

(160,218 posts)
Wed May 27, 2020, 09:20 PM May 2020

Colombian designers prepare cardboard hospital beds that double as coffins

As coronavirus cases soar in Latin America, doctors say unorthodox idea may be necessary

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
@joeparkdan
Wed 27 May 2020 06.30 EDT



ABC Displays, which usually manufactures cardboard advertising props, has developed a bed that converts into a coffin. Photograph: Courtesy ABC Displays


A cardboard hospital bed that doubles as a coffin may seem morbid, but as Latin America emerges as the latest coronavirus hotspot, doctors have suggested it may be an innovation whose time has come.

With Covid-19 cases surging across the region, a team of Colombian designers came up with the idea as a grimly pragmatic solution for anticipated shortages of hospital beds and funerary caskets.

“We were shut down for a couple of months like everyone else, until we had this idea,” said Rodolfo Gómez, the founder of ABC Displays, which normally creates cardboard advertising props. “But when we saw what was happening in Ecuador, where bodies were piling up on the streets, we knew we had to prepare somehow.”

Colombia’s southern neighbour was the setting for one of the region’s first major outbreaks in April, when residents in the city of Guayaquil were forced to dump the bodies of their dead in the streets. In that instance, local authorities ended up distributing cardboard coffins to alleviate a shortage of funeral supplies.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/colombia-coronavirus-cardboard-hospital-beds-coffins

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Colombian designers prepare cardboard hospital beds that double as coffins (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2020 OP
Wow. Just wow. nt tblue37 May 2020 #1
"Morbid" and "grimly... 3catwoman3 May 2020 #2
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