Proper disposal of medical waste essential
It is alarming to learn that none of the 88 hospitals and 182 diagnostic centres operating in Chattogram have any mechanism in place to incinerate clinical waste. Even the two main government hospitals of the city—Chattogram Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) and Chattogram General Hospital (CGH)—do not have incinerators. This is a cause for concern because open dumping of medical waste in the landfills poses serious risks to public health. Diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, tetanus, hepatitis B and C and even HIV/AIDS can easily spread through the untreated medical waste. So medical waste must be collected separately and sterilised or incinerated to avoid the risk of contamination.
Not only in Chattogram, the situation is pretty much the same in other divisional cities as well. The divisional cities, excluding the capital, have around 1,380 public and private healthcare establishments that produce over 20 tonnes of medical waste every day. This huge amount of untreated waste is dumped in the landfills which are mostly situated near rivers and water bodies. This daily ran a report a few months ago about how medical waste, dumped near rivers and wetlands, is polluting the drinking water supplies as well as contaminating the soil.
However, it is good to know that a private organisation has been working to improve the situation in Chattogram. It has signed contracts with many hospitals and diagnostic centres across the city to collect their waste. However, since the organisation uses a pit-hole method to destroy medical waste, it has been causing air pollution as a result.
Needless to say, we need a modern waste disposal system to deal with the huge amount of medical waste being produced every day. In addition, the government should strictly enforce the Medical Waste (Management and Processing) Rules 2008 to avoid any public health disaster in the future.
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