End in sight to Medical College’s waste disposal issues

The plants will be built and operated by the Integrated Rural Technology Centre at Mundur in Palakkad.
Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital | Express Photo
Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital | Express Photo

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The solid answer to the burning issue is here. Six biogas plants will soon be commissioned for safe disposal of solid waste at the Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College (GMC) campus. Citing absence of proper waste management mechanisms, the institutions on the campus, for some time now, have been resorting to the dumping of waste at vacant slots, creating health problems and providing a breeding site for vectors and rats.

“The sprawling 137-acre campus houses colleges, hospitals, research institutions and hostels. Each day barrels of biowastes are generated from these institutions. The plan is to convert the biowaste into energy,” said Dr M S Sharmad, college superintendent.

The plants will come up at Priyadarshini Institute of Paramedical Sciences’ women’s hostel (PIPMS), SAT hospital premises, ladies’ hostel, men’s hostel, super speciality block and at the new OP block. “The biogas will be used not only for canteens and hostel messes but also for the microbiology lab. Supplying biogas to microbiology lab will help save around `40,000 a month as electricity charges,” he said.  

The plants will be built and operated by the Integrated Rural Technology Centre at Mundur in Palakkad. It has agreed to carry out the maintenance works for three years, Sharmad said.While PIPMS and SAT Hospital will have biogas plants of 600 kg capacity each, the super-specialty block and the new OP block will have biogas plants of 500 kg capacity. Whereas in the case of ladies and men’s hostels it will have biogas plants of 200 kg capacity each.To make the campus a green one, the authorities have decided to set up a vertical garden and vegetable garden.

Earlier, the absence of waste management system at the TMC campus had drawn flak after a patient admitted to the orthopaedic ward at the hospital was bitten by a rat in April. Health Minister K K Shailaja had then urged the hospital authorities to employ the service of pest control agency for rodent control and to set up waste management mechanisms on the campus.

The Health Department, considering the importance of waste management, had sanctioned an amount of `3.30 crore for the implementation of the planning scheme ‘Waste Treatment Facilities in Medical Colleges’ in May. It was followed by another allocation of Rs 4.99 crore in July for the  the scheme ‘Developing a Mechanism for Systematic Solid and Liquid Waste Management in Major Hospitals’.

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