Bio medical waste at Kashmir’s SMHS raises a stink

“Ironically the hospitals,hoped to bring relief to the sick,are themselves creating health hazards to the community due to the improper management of waste generated in the course of health care activities,” the study notes.

The study was published in September 2004 but to this day no effort has been made to devise a proper management plan for disposing off the waste even as the number of patients visiting the hospital has increased by thousands since the study was first published.

At present,according to the J-K state Pollution Control Board,the hospital generates more than 700 tonnes of Bio-Medical waste per year that includes soiled dressings,swabs,cotton,blood and other body fluids,dissected body organs and tissues,disposable syringes,I/V fluid bottles,Ryles tubes,injection vials,needles,blades,scalpels,lab reagents,glass slides,Radiographic dyes,discarded films,discarded medicine and paper wastes.

“The BMW generated is not segregated and is either burnt in an incinerator or lifted by the Srinagar Municipal Corporation for open dumping (or land filling),thus not fulfilling the requirements envisaged in Bio-Medical Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules 1998,” the doctors found out. “The waste generated is not subjected to any treatment from the site of production to the site of storage near the incinerator. Occasionally,lime is sprinkled at the dumping site”.

The study also noted that sanitation workers collect the waste with bare hands without taking any safety precautions. They hardly ever wear gloves,facemasks or other protective clothing. The sanitation workers have neither been trained in handling the waste nor been immunized against Hepatitis B or Tetanus despite a high risk of infection.

And the practice continues to this day. The workers even now collect sharp objects like needles,blades and scalpels with bare hands,often getting injured and exposing themselves to deadly diseases like HIV and Hepatitis. The hospital doesn’t even have a shredder to destroy needles,blades etc.

“Every year eighty lakh to one crore sixty lakh people contract HIV infection due to pricks by infected needles and sixty lakh to one crore twenty lakh people get Hepatitis B infection due to the same reason,” said a doctor who works in the department of Social and Preventive Medicine. “Every 24 seconds,a person dies somewhere in the world because of unsafe injections. My personal observation is that 99 per cent of the injections administered to the patients in this hospital are unsafe”.

The collected waste is dumped at the land filling sites without treating it properly,exposing people living near the dumping sites to many health hazards. Though the hospital has acquired an incinerator to burn much of the waste,it has been installed too close to the hospital leading to further problems. “The major portion of the waste is fed to the pyrolytic incinerator that is run irregularly. The exhaust from the incinerator pollutes the atmosphere,” the study observes. Besides,the incinerator remains out of order for most of the time.

The study had made some recommendations for proper disposal of Bio-Medical Waste like segregation of the waste before dumping,proper storage and transportation,use of bags of various colours for collecting different types of wastes separately,providing protective clothing to the sanitation workers and training them to handle the waste. It also proposed setting up ‘Hospital Bio-Medical Waste Management Committee’,headed by the Medical Superintendent,to oversee proper disposal of the waste.

However,the recommendations were never implemented despite the Medical Superintendent of the hospital being a co-author of the study. “We have been pressing hard for the implementation of these recommendations but the administration is unmoved. They don’t listen,” said a doctor. And what about the proposed BMW management committee? “It exists only on paper,” the doctor said.

Medical Superintendent,SMHS Hospital,Dr Waseem Querishi,who is currently undergoing treatment in Delhi,excused himself from commenting on the issue. “We will talk about it when I get back to the hospital,” he said.