Paddle-driven water dispenser joins fight against Covid-19
If you visit Mugda or Dhaka Medical College Hospital, you will see a unique water dispenser upfront.
Unlike the traditional water dispensers, which are operated with the bare hand, these ones can be operated using your leg!
If you push the paddles below the dispenser with your leg, the dispenser will provide you with pure drinking water.
What are the benefits, you may ask? During the Covid-19 pandemic, you will be able to get a glass of drinking water without touching the dispenser that hundreds of users might have touched before you did, thus reducing the chance of you getting Covid-19.
This idea was implemented by a group of bloggers in remembrance of their fellow blogger Dr Rasel Parvez, who died from cancer earlier this year.
"We took the voluntary initiative to encourage people to use paddle-driven water dispenser rather than hand-operated dispensers to curb the spread of Covid-19," a press release from the bloggers says.
Both water dispensers were installed on June 16 to provide pure drinking water to the public for free.
Blogger Baki Billah, who is involved with the initiative, told The Business Standard that the water dispensers remain operational from morning to noon every day.
"A volunteer always stays with the dispenser, helping people to learn how to operate it," he said, adding that volunteers of Bangladesh Students Union helped them with the implementation of the project.
Every day, around 200-300 people get pure drinking water from the paddle-driven dispenser. In order to avoid the risk of reusing the same glasses, the team also provides paper cups with the dispenser.
"The daily cost of the project is around Tk300-400," the press release says.
The traditional water dispensers are usually hand operated. With hundreds of people touching it with their bare hands, it increases the risk of Covid-19 contagion.
The idea of paddle-driven water dispenser helps people get pure drinking water without touching the frequently touched water tape of the dispenser with their hands.
Many countries around the world already started using the paddle tap water dispensers. "But the higher cost of the device and use of electronic sensors make it difficult to implement that concept in Bangladesh," the press release says.
So, the team of bloggers, in collaboration with the post-coronavirus tech invention company Multiverse, came up with an idea to fix this issue. What they did is that they came up with a way to convert the existing hand-operated water dispensers to the paddle-driven ones.
"Based on our experience, we assume that most of the hand-operated water dispensers, which are already installed in offices, hospitals, schools, markets and hotels, can be converted into paddle-driven ones," the press release says.