News Desk :
A scandalous disconnect between the government agencies to streamline and manage clinical waste is posing serious hazards to the public health and environment of Dhaka, reports bdnews24.com.
But as the health emergency caused by the coronavirus pandemic has taken centre stage, the battle to dispose of infectious waste appears to have been sidelined by both government and private consumers.
Mismanagement of the infectious biomedical waste from the hospitals and other health care facilities may lead to transmission of diseases like typhoid, cholera, hepatitis and AIDS through syringes and needles, warns Dr Mushtuq Husein, a public health expert.
“Pathogens from abandoned or reused medical wastes like a syringe may enter a human body leading to injury or even death. The diseases can spread through animals too,” he said.
The toxic chemicals in untreated trash has may pollute the soil, water and air, said Shahriar Hossain, the general secretary of the Environment and Social Development Organisation.
“These waste materials may enter the environment and penetrate the food chain and have disastrous consequences by infecting the animals and fish.”
The hospitals and healthcare facilities in Bangladesh generate at least 248 tonnes of
medical waste per day, and 86 per cent of the garbage contaminated with bodily fluids or other infectious materials are not properly managed, according to a research conducted by BRAC. The government drafted a medical waste management and processing policy in 2008, but it has not been put to practice.
Proper management of medical waste was also made mandatory in the National Environment Policy 2018.
Most of the hospitals in the country do not follow the policies to ensure a proper health care waste management system. The city hospitals, both government-run and privately managed, have undergone modernisation over the past years, but they do not have proper a waste management system in place.
The waste management policy covers a separate set of directives for two types of non-contagious and nine types of contagious wastes.
A private organisation, Prism, has been collecting the contagious wastes from the Dhaka hospitals and destroying those, while the twin Dhaka city corporations remove the non-contagious wastes. bdnews24.com visits to many of the hospitals in the city found they did not have the six different colour-coded waste containers required by rules.
Yellow containers are meant for disposing of hazardous waste, red containers for sharp wastes such as needles and syringes, blue containers for radioactive wastes, green containers for recyclable wastes and the black containers are for general wastes. The colour code, however, is not maintained anywhere and the wastes are disposed of indiscriminately.
General wastes were found disposed of in the containers for contagious wastes while hazardous wastes like personals protective equipment or PPE, mask, medicine bottles were found in the containers for general wastes.
The medical waste containers are supposed to be covered, but most of the containers at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital were uncovered. Worse, many hospitals have no containers for contagious wastes.
A scandalous disconnect between the government agencies to streamline and manage clinical waste is posing serious hazards to the public health and environment of Dhaka, reports bdnews24.com.
But as the health emergency caused by the coronavirus pandemic has taken centre stage, the battle to dispose of infectious waste appears to have been sidelined by both government and private consumers.
Mismanagement of the infectious biomedical waste from the hospitals and other health care facilities may lead to transmission of diseases like typhoid, cholera, hepatitis and AIDS through syringes and needles, warns Dr Mushtuq Husein, a public health expert.
“Pathogens from abandoned or reused medical wastes like a syringe may enter a human body leading to injury or even death. The diseases can spread through animals too,” he said.
The toxic chemicals in untreated trash has may pollute the soil, water and air, said Shahriar Hossain, the general secretary of the Environment and Social Development Organisation.
“These waste materials may enter the environment and penetrate the food chain and have disastrous consequences by infecting the animals and fish.”
The hospitals and healthcare facilities in Bangladesh generate at least 248 tonnes of
medical waste per day, and 86 per cent of the garbage contaminated with bodily fluids or other infectious materials are not properly managed, according to a research conducted by BRAC. The government drafted a medical waste management and processing policy in 2008, but it has not been put to practice.
Proper management of medical waste was also made mandatory in the National Environment Policy 2018.
Most of the hospitals in the country do not follow the policies to ensure a proper health care waste management system. The city hospitals, both government-run and privately managed, have undergone modernisation over the past years, but they do not have proper a waste management system in place.
The waste management policy covers a separate set of directives for two types of non-contagious and nine types of contagious wastes.
A private organisation, Prism, has been collecting the contagious wastes from the Dhaka hospitals and destroying those, while the twin Dhaka city corporations remove the non-contagious wastes. bdnews24.com visits to many of the hospitals in the city found they did not have the six different colour-coded waste containers required by rules.
Yellow containers are meant for disposing of hazardous waste, red containers for sharp wastes such as needles and syringes, blue containers for radioactive wastes, green containers for recyclable wastes and the black containers are for general wastes. The colour code, however, is not maintained anywhere and the wastes are disposed of indiscriminately.
General wastes were found disposed of in the containers for contagious wastes while hazardous wastes like personals protective equipment or PPE, mask, medicine bottles were found in the containers for general wastes.
The medical waste containers are supposed to be covered, but most of the containers at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital were uncovered. Worse, many hospitals have no containers for contagious wastes.
