ONLY 11% of healthcare waste was treated with segregation in Bangladesh in 2019, according to a joint report of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). In addition, 76% of total healthcare waste was disposed of safely, but a large portion of waste remained untreated or was segregated without treatment.
Bangladesh’s waste treatment percentage of total waste was second lowest in South Asia – just above Nepal – among five countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In terms of waste treatment with or without segregation, Bangladesh was placed at the bottom in the region, said the report titled “Global progress report on WASH in healthcare facilities: Fundamentals first”. It was published on Monday.
In urban areas of Bangladesh, waste segregation was better compared to rural areas. 54% of waste was segregated in 2019 in urban areas against 26% in rural areas. However, waste treatment management was very poor in both areas. Urban areas treated 15% of waste while it was 10% in rural areas.
This is a country where a senior ASP was taken to a hospital for treatment but after admission, the hospital staff informed his relatives that Anisul had fainted. A CCTV footage of the hospital room showed that its staff physically assaulted Anisul –an act which ultimately led to his death. This only occurred last month.
There are 6,067 licensed institutes, including 2,130 hospitals, 3,856 diagnostic centres, and 81 blood banks in the country. Barely a tenth of them are inspected on a regular basis — and most of those so-called inspections are perfunctory. In just this year hospitals have been shut down for issuing fake Covid certificates.
Other hospitals had a range of violations ranging from operating with expired licenses to not having enough staff or having unhygienic environments. In the case of waste there is a rule to incinerate hospital waste for proper management, but many private clinics have no incinerators and they mix the waste with normal waste for disposal.
So we can see that patient care is not advanced enough or uniform enough for us to reach even local regional standards — let alone global standards. Unless inspections are carried out with more rigorousness we can hardly expect our hospital to worry about waste when they aren’t worried about their patients.
