Medical Incinerator for the hospital in Bassar/Togo
About the Project
Bassar is a town in Togo and counts 25,000 inhabitants. The charitable organisation “Fi Bassar” (= Save Bassar) has set itself the task to help local people. They have schools and a hospital, but the conditions are not comparable to Germany. For example there are often sterile instruments for the implementation of surgeries needed. The organisation “Fi Bassar” has been there twice, in order to improve the living conditions of the local population. A well for a school was built and so called “start-in-life-packages” distributed to the mothers of new born children.
For the next project the organisation asked for cooperation with “Technology without Borders” to improve the waste disposal in Bassar. The local hospital supplies 125,000 patients, partially coming from very distant regions. Every day huge amounts of waste accumulate, whereby the major part of it is comparable with harmless domestic waste (e. g. plastic packaging or paper).
Used syringe needles and other waste products could be contaminated with pathogens through contact with infected persons. In Germany this so-called “infected waste” is subject to strict safety regulations from storing to transport up to sterilization. But up to now there does not exist a possibility to dispose off this sort of waste in Togo. That’s why the waste is collected and stored in certain places. The quantity of waste grows constantly and now a solution is needed to deal with the “infected waste” in accordance with the present circumstances. “Technology without Borders” has worked out necessary knowledge in the past and that’s the reason for the cooperation with “Fi Bassar”. In collaboration with the local people a “medical waste incinerator” should be built that can reach temperatures between 1,000 - 1,200 ° C in the burning process and by this destroy resistant pathogens.
At the exploration for the application of a waste separation system and the potential construction of a waste incinerator, a separation system for the hospital could already be realized and the hospital staff could be taught in waste separation. The people of Bassar could be sensibilized for the relation of the waste situation with the water and life quality, too. Whilst the stay it was also talked with responsible persons of the Health Ministry about the waste situation and we found out that there is already a national waste disposal concept for hospitals. The introduced waste separation system followed this concept. Furthermore, we achieved that a programm, which is subsidised by the state, is extended to the hospital in Bassar. This means the construction of a fuel-driven waste incinerator and the implementation of an entire waste disposal concept. As a result, the project of technology without borders was declared to be finished, because the construction of our incinerator model was not required anymore.
Gallerie
Information
Project number
Project Leader
Daniel Sperr
Regional Groups
Project members
Jan Reher
Marcel Hartmann
Dimona Heindl
Jürgen Kneißl
Ismael Myamyaogo Massigan