A team of volunteers in Syria have cobbled together prototypes of a ventilator and a testing machine — homemade equipment to fight the new coronavirus if it hits the last rebel stronghold, where hospitals lie in ruins after nine years of war.

The group of 12, mainly technicians and engineers, hope to build hundreds of makeshift machines to combat the pandemic in Syria’s northwest, where an army advance made nearly 1 million people homeless this year.

“If coronavirus cases start to surface here, it will spread widely,” said Ayoub Abdul-Karim, a 20-year-old graduate who specialised in medical equipment. “We’re working on this today because there won’t be enough machines. We suffer in the hospitals from a big lack of ventilators.”