What's the problem? Usually, infectious hospital waste in Nepal is burned in pits by pouring flammable liquids over it. The temperatures reached by this method are not high enough to sterilize the waste completely. In most cases, leftover waste will remain. This waste along with its germs and bacteria will be distributed around the hospital property from wind and animals. In the case of rain, the ground water may become contaminated as well. All of this increases the risk of infection for patients, hospital staff, visitors and neighbours. Technology without Borders faces this issue and provides a solution.
How to solve it?
Based on knowledge and social connections from a previous project in Nepal (
Environmentally friendly disposal of biomedical waste in Bahunipati), this project delivered three incinerators for burning biomedical waste in the towns of Baluwa, Kattike Deurali and Manthali. We used the well-tried two chamber incinerator model of TeoG. Due to the two combustion chambers as well as the chimney with a height of 4 to 5m, constant temperatures of more than 800°C are verifiably reached (peak temperatures up to 1050°C). As a result, the biomedical waste is sterilized, almost no carbon black and toxic gases arise (dioxin window between 300 and 600°C) and the waste volume is minimized. The ash can be burried without any concerns. The incinerators used in the previous project provided a burn rate of up to 20kg/h per incinerator.
A team of three project members was sent to Nepal in from mid of March to mid of May 2018. In preparation for the TeoG team's arrival, local hospital staff had built the foundations for the incinerators as well as bought the necessary materials. Our team was in contact with the local partners before the arrival in Nepal in order to plan the building process of the incinerators. Also, our team taught the hospital staff how to use, maintain and repair the incinerators so they can effectively and independently handle it in the future.
Furthermore we trained two employees of the Nepalese social enterprise „Blue Waste To Value (BW2V)“ in how to realize projects like ours in future by themselves. The idea is that BW2V will implement such incinerator projects in future by themselves for us. Additionally BW2V can start own projects without our help in Nepal. At TwB we believe in the principle that we help people so they can help themselves in the future.
At this point we want to thank the German Rotary Volunteer Doctors e.V. who mainly financed the project, the company Testo from Lenzkirch/Germany for the generous donation of a flue gas analyser and all other donators.
