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.
The toxic chemicals in untreated trash have 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 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.
It is found that 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 (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.
The collapse of the clinical waste disposal system was also blindingly obvious at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Ibrahim Cardiac Hospital and BIRDEM Hospital where the hazardous wastes were not segregated from non-hazardous garbage.
Bio-hazardous wastes like medicines, syringes, vaccine bottles, PPEs, masks, gloves and blood stained plastics are found in the general waste containers in these hospitals.
In BIRDEM Hospital and Ibrahim Cardiac Hospital, cleaners pick bottles and other objects from the heaps of general waste to resell those but they do not use proper safety gear or clean.
According to the protocol, rubber or plastic tubes and bags must be cut before disposal to prevent reuse. But most of the hospitals do not follow the rule.
A staff member at the Shahid Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital was found sorting the plastic waste materials from the general waste to sell those to the scrap material traders.
Blood-stained bandages are discarded in front of the emergency department at the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation or NITOR.
In many cases, the city hospitals do not even dispose of such clinical waste, while it is required to be destroyed within 48 hours.
City’s messy medical waste handling endangers public health
FE Team | Published: October 18, 2020 23:41:54
City’s messy medical waste handling endangers public health
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