Experts at a seminar on Sunday stressed the need for safe medical waste management as reckless and hazardous handling of such waste is threatening public health safety in the country.
Due to economic value of plastic components, they said, medical staffs often sell them to make extra bucks and thus creating not only public health threats but also environmental hazards unconsciously.
The experts demanded for amendment of existing policy on medical waste management, need of law enforcement, adequate monitoring and evaluation by ministries of health and environment, coordinated, integrated and planned action of local government organisations and city corporations.
Besides, they also underscored the need for adequate training of human resources, create mass awareness; adopt contemporary technologies and good governance from concerned authorities in case of hazardous medical waste management.
Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Prism Bangladesh Foundation jointly organised the seminar titled ‘Medical Waste Management for Safe Environment and Healthy Generation’ at a city hotel.
DNCC panel mayor Osman Gani presided over the seminar while Minister for Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED) Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain attended it as the chief guest. DSCC Mayor Sayeed Khokon and Secretary of the LGED were present as the special guests.
According to sources, Prism Bangladesh Foundation is the only specialized organisation in the country that has expertise and capacity of safe medical waste management. It covers a total 846 government and private hospitals of Dhaka, Savar and Jessore.
A total of 349 hospitals of DSCC, 405 of DNCC, 31 of Savar and 61 of Jessore are under the coverage of Prism. But many other medical facilities producing medical waste and dumping them openly around the country.
Speaking on the occasion, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain laid emphasis on incorporation of 700 drug producing companies as well as hospitals, health complexes
and diagnostic centres to insure safe medical waste management in the country.
“Bangladesh is lagging behind in case of proper medical waste management. Every hospital must have in-house waste treatment facility but in reality it’s not there. For ensuring public health safety, we have to ensure safe medical waste management,” he said.
The minister added, “LGED will enhance all sorts of cooperation to build up capacity in districts to upazila level as mismanagement of such waste is threatening the environment and public health. It will also require public private partnership to achieve the success in this field.”
DSCC Mayor Sayeed Khokon identifies waste management as a basic challenge for the corporation workers and said they can collect 70 per cent of waste and urged cooperation from the city dwellers to be more careful about open dumping of kitchen waste on road.
“Irresponsible and reckless medical waste management by the hospital authorities helping to spread infectious diseases among the cleaners who are specially women and children. Due to high economic value of syringe, blood and saline bags in the recycling market, hospital workers are not dumping them, rather selling to the dealers and thus hazardous portion of the medical waste is spreading out,” he pointed out.
Sayeed Khokon said, “We are working to increase our waste management capacity. We have human resource and budget shortage and require broader cooperation from Department of Health and Environment to oversee the medical waste management issues.”
“Some 14 to 15 tonnes of medical waste produced per day by these hospitals but they provide 7.65 tonnes to Prism and the rest are traded by the authorities openly despite having hazardous health threats, as it has high economic value,” Prism Executive Director Khondkar Anisur Rahman told the seminar.
He mentioned that, “Prism only covers the Dhaka city and its adjacent areas. Due to population growth many medical facilities and diagnostic centres have developed in the other regions of the country and they need to be addressed adequately. Otherwise, he said, infectious diseases may break out and endanger public health safety.
Head of Bio-Safety icddr,b Dr Asadul Ghani, Director of Department of Environment (DoE) Md Ziaul Haque, CEO of DSCC Khan Mohammad Bilal, CEO of DNCC Mesbahul Islam, Chief Waste Management Officer of DSCC Md. Shafiqul Alam and Chief Waste Management Officer of DSCC Bipan Kumar Saha, among others, spoke in the seminar.
Md Ziaul Haque underscored the need of amendment of the medical waste management policy and incorporates the authorities like Health Ministry and Local Government bodies to facilitate the waste management procedure and evaluate continuously.
“DoE provides license to the hospitals but does not monitor the process of hazardous waste management process and systems of medical facilities. With local government we have to work simultaneously and ensure the proper management in future,” he mentioned.
He added, “DoE lacks enough human resources. Adequate cooperation can ensure the process. Appropriate policy amendment can also broaden the scope of integrated cooperation and we have to ensure that for sake of sustainable development.”
