Jalandhar faces a medical waste problem

Jalandhar is witnessing a huge development in healthcare services. The city has about 450 hospitals, including small dispensaries and healthcare centres, serving a large population in adjoining villages. These hospitals daily produce large chunks of bio-medical waste and hospitals dump it on roads, making it the source of serious health hazards.

"Biomedical waste has solid or liquid form. It is generated from healthcare establishments such as hospitals, blood banks, laboratories, research institutes, and veterinary hospitals," Rajiv Vig, a doctor, says.

"Hospital waste includes non-liquid tissue, body parts, blood, blood products, and body fluids from humans and other primates, laboratories and veterinary wastes, etc," says Rajiv Dhawan of the Tagore Hospital.

Dhawan said, "It is classified into the infectious waste and non-infectious waste categories, though the proportion of infectious waste is low. If infectious waste is not disposed of scientifically, it can contaminate non-infectious waste. Hence the training of hospital staff in segregating bio-medical wastes is necessary."

Asked about the procedure of disposing of waste, Dhawan said that according to the provisions, hospitals had to dispose it of in yellow and blue bags provided by the disposal agency itself. With the ever-growing population and the number of hospitals and other medical entities, the problems of pollution from biomedical waste are also increasing simultaneously.

Though waste from hospitals and nursing homes is required to be collected and treated separately and though it has to be transported in a hygienic manner to the waste disposal sites, most of the hospitals dump it openly.

"We try to salvage any discarded material and sell it," a rag-picker said while collecting some material from the roadside. But rag-pickers are ignorant of the risk of injuries from contaminated needles, which may cause infectious diseases.

While contacted, the Civil Surgeon of Jalandhar, J P Singh said it was the duty of the Pollution Control Board to take care of the bio-waste dumped on roadsides, adding "the city has no recycling plant, and we give all solid waste to a private agency out of town, after separating it from municipal waste, which is given to the municipal corporation.

Biomedical waste also emits a foul smell during the rains. The stagnant waste and unhealthy conditions are a potential breeding ground for flies, mosquitoes, rodents and insects.