SRINAGAR: Srinagar Municipal Corporation on Thursday installed the first disinfecting tunnel outside the Chest Disease Hospital, the main Covid-19 designated hospital in Srinagar. It was locally designed, assembled and installed.
The first Decontamination and Sanitization Tunnel manufactured and commissioned by #SMC has started operating at Chest Diseases Hospital, #Srinagar! Overjoyed by the response by the frontline health workers and doctors! We will cover EVERY hospital! Proud of our Mech Engineers!!! pic.twitter.com/FqoiBfYRer
— Mayor of Srinagar (@MayorofS) April 2, 2020
The hospital usually remains crowded as most of the Covid-19 patients are admitted here. Healthcare workers, officials and the attendants of the patients normally visit the hospital and installing the tunnel was vital.
The tunnel can instantly sanitize the people who move through it. It sprays disinfectants on the people in measured quantity. Municipal officials said the spray is not harmful.
Srinagar Mayor, Junaid Azim Matoo visited the facility along with Srinagar Deputy Commissioner, Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary when the switches were put on. Mattoo has been quite critical of the successive state governments for their failure in managing better critical healthcare. In a recent tweet, he said Kashmir has only 95 ventilators for a population of eight million.
Kudos to our dynamic mayor @Junaid_Mattu @MayorofS for installing sanitation channel in chest diseases hospital.. first its kind in Kashmir… uses safe and effective chemical for disinfection…@listenshahid @drsamiarashid @SyedAbidShah
— Dr Naveed Shah (@naveednazirshah) April 2, 2020
The hospital in whose premises the facility was installed is the oldest in Kashmir. It was set up in the 1880s, tragically, at the peak of another epidemic.
