Thinking out of the box: Thane cops turn air cooler into ‘disinfection centre’

One of the frontliners in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic, the city police in Thane have come out with what could be termed a perfect example of frugal engineering in sanitation and personal hygiene.

As the country is facing an unprecedented shortage of disinfectants and hand sanitisers, the innovative system introduced by the cops gets the work done quickly and cheaply.

When the entire healthcare ecosystem is grappling with lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and even doctors and paramedics are working without basic protective gear, the police force, which comes further down the pecking order, stands no chance of getting adequate disinfectants or hand sanitsers.

However, with a bit of innovation and a lot of imagination, the cops at the Manpada police station in Thane district have found a solution to this issue. They set up a make-shift sanitisation centre with the help of an old air cooler and some spray pipes.

Air coolers are kept at many police stations across the country for spraying rose water on police personnel to soothe them during scorching summer days. Now the rarely used air cooler works as an effective mass disinfection centre at the Thane station.

“In fact, we got inspired by a WhatsApp forward, which had shown how a water cooler could be used to spray fragrance by pouring rose scent in it. Instead, we came out with our own jugaad by spraying disinfectants with the help of a spray pipe,” said Dileep Jadhav, Assistant Police Inspector.

Dada Hari Choure, Senior Police Inspector at Manapada Police Station, said they had earlier installed such sanitisers at Experia Mall near Palava City, a gated locality at Dombivali, a Thane suburb.

“We don’t get any PPE, but still we have to meet several people on a daily basis as part of our job and nobody knows whether a person is infected with COVID-19 or not. Hence we have to think of innovative ideas to keep ourselves protected in the present situation,” said another official.

According to Nasir Kulkarni, an inspector at the same station, one can call it an Indian Jugaad, and it is a small step to care about the law enforcement officials, who are facing trying times.

The officers make sure that all cops who go out to the field for duty go through this ‘sanitisation centre’, where the air cooler sprays disinfectants on them.

“With the number of COVID-19 cases rising, we spent almost 12-15 hours in a very risky environment every day. We don't know who is infected. Everybody expects us to do everything. Sometimes we have to check dead bodies, even when medical staff refused to touch them. After all, we are also human, we also have families and loved ones,” Kulkarni noted.

Recently, nine police personnel were tested COVID-19 positive. Five of them were part of the security detail of a Maharashtra cabinet minister. A junior official also got infected while he was on duty at Kasturba Gandhi Hospital where the government has set up an isolation centre to treat coronavirus patients.