26 October 2004	Tuesday	11 Ramazan 1425

LAHORE, Oct 25: There are teething troubles with the only incinerator installed in the public sector Children's Hospital during its test-run.

Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed had informally launched the incinerator on Sept 2 and directed the hospital administration to ensure its regular functioning. He had also asked the hospital administration to ensure that the incinerator remained in the best working condition for its formal inauguration by Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi on Oct 15. However, the hospital has so far failed to make the incinerator run smoothly even for a couple of hours daily.

Sources in the hospital told said that the incinerator had started emitting smoke and was not working smoothly. They said an engineer from Karachi had also worked on it but he left without removing the smoke problem.

When contacted, Children's Hospital and Institute of Child Health (CH&ICH) project director Prof Dr Tahir Masood said little problems were being faced by them in the smooth run of the incinerator. He said these problems were in the notice of the health department. He said there were teething troubles with incinerator because it remained unused for many years before installation. He said the incinerator's infrastructure was complete and could be inaugurated by the chief minister anytime.

It may be mentioned that so far only the Jinnah Hospital had started sending its infectious waste to the Children's Hospital for incineration.

Meanwhile, the other teaching hospitals, including the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, have cancelled their contracts with the Shalamar Hospital and are ready to send its infectious waste to the Children's Hospital.

It may be mentioned that the Children's Hospital had organized a workshop on Hospital Waste Management on Sept 2, which was attended by medical superintendents of all the public sector hospitals in the city.

Chairing the inaugural session of the workshop, health minister Dr Javed had asked all the medical superintendents to utilize the facility of incinerator in a bid to control infectious diseases. He had also stated that the government could not afford to see this project fail.

In a bid to keep the medical superintendents on their toes, the health minister had stated that he would personally monitor the project and visit each and every hospital to see what was going on regarding the infectious waste collection, segregation and disposal.CH&ICH PD Prof Masood had told the medical superintendents that the incinerator would be run 18 hours a day with a capacity of incinerating some 3.6 ton waste.

He said the hospital administration had completed the training of the staff concerned and all modalities finalized for the training of staff in the other hospitals, collection and segregation of infectious waste, its transportation and incineration at the Children's Hospital.