The Children’s Hospital No 1 in HCM City has pioneered in the program on medical wastewater treatment investment socialization, by putting the first waste water treatment work into operation in May 2011. The system has the capacity of 1000 cubic meters per day, built by the Vietnam-Japan Environment Company with the cost of 9.5 billion dong.

 Huynh Van Men, Head of the Administration Department of the Children’s Hospital No 1, said the waste water treatment system only covers an area of 200-300 square meters, while a system would old technology would cover 400-500 square meters.

 The Vietnam-Japan Environment Company pays the whole investment cost of 9.5 billion dong, while the hospital has to pay 156 million dong a month, or 2 billion dong a year, to the company. After 10 years of operation, the company will hand over the system with all equipments to the hospital. Especially, all the expenses on the labor force to run the system, the maintenance fees, sludge treatment fees and expenses on electricity are being paid by the company.

 Men believes that the hospital has made a right move when deciding to build waste water treatment system under the mode of investment socialization. With the mode, the hospital can have a waste water treatment system after a short time. Meanwhile, the hospital does not need to take care for the system management (now four workers are taking responsibility for running the system), while the technical team of the hospital is not qualified enough to deal with the system with modern technology.

 Men said that if the hospital’s technical workers have to take care of the system, they would not be able to fix the problems when necessary. If so, under-standard waste water would be leaking to the environment.

The Hung Vuong Hospital is also using a system which has the capacity of 1000 cubic meters under the program. Other hospitals are following necessary steps to be able to operate waste water treatment systems under the socialization mode.

 The Cho Ray Hospital is one of the first hospitals which built waste water treatment works with the expenses spent by the Ministry of Healthcare. Cho Ray’s treatment work has the total investment capital of 80 billion dong and the capacity of 4000 cubic per meter. The work is using AAO Technology, which combines the processes of treating organic pollutants by microorganisms, ensuring the effective treatment with low and stable expenses. It is estimated that the hospital has to pay 669,427,500 dong per annum for the treatment system.

 The waste water treatment technology is being applied in the trial basis at Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital.

On May 16, the HCM City Healthcare Department organized a demonstration, where healthcare officers of 24 districts in the city could see with their eyes the two models of waste water treatment systems installed at the healthcare centers in wards 11 and 21.

 The representative from the Vietnam-Japan Environment Company said the company has installed the sample models, so that healthcare centers can choose the suitable models for them. The total investment capital would be about a little over 200 million dong. These are the technologies which allow minimizing sledge, with no tank for depositing, no sledge tank and no need to treat sledge. The systems can work with the capacity of 2 cubic meters per day.

 The biggest advantage of the technologies is the low operation fee. Meanwhile, the systems can be relocated when healthcare centers move to other places.

 Analysts believe that in the current circumstances, where the state has to cut down public investments, the investment socialization is considered the best solution for hospitals to deal with the waste water treatment problem.
Source:vietnamnet