India – 80 percent hospital waste "being sold or recycled"

Indian Daily Times reports that only 1,000 kilos of the 5,000 kilos of infectious hospital waste produced every day by 15 government hospitals was being sent to the incinerator at Children‘‘s Hospital, an official of the Health Department said on Thursday. The official said the 15 hospitals produced 15,000 kilos of hazardous waste every day, out of which 5,000 kilos waste was considered infectious.



Yasir Gul Khan of the Environment Protection Department said that the rest of the waste posed serious threat to the health of citizens and was probably sold, recycled and re-used. Younis Zahid, EPD deputy district officer, said the department had arrested a gang involved in buying hospital waste from the staff of Lahore General Hospital. He said a case had been registered against an afghan trader Sakhi Murad. He said the arrest had been made to end this illegal business. EPD deputy director Naseemur Rehman said the department had recently sent notice to 70 hospitals for not complying with section 31 of the Pakistan Environment Protection Act (PEPA) of 1997. The section requires all hospitals to dispose their waste properly according to the Hospital Waste Management Rules (HWMR) 2005.



Sohail Saqlain, additional secretary health, said a committee had been formed to regulate hospital waste. He said the committee would check whether government hospitals sent their waste to the incinerator at Children‘‘s Hospital.



Dr Rizwan Shah of Mayo Hospital said if infectious waste were not destroyed, it would cause many fatal diseases like Hepatitis and AIDS. He said the waste also caused skin, respiratory and eye diseases. He also said hospitals not having access to an incinerator burned their waste in open areas and polluted the environment. A Health Department official said each hospital bed produced one kilo of waste every day. He said one third of the waste was infectious and the remaining was risk-free. Khalid Shah, director of the Incinerator Department of Children‘‘s Hospital, said they only dealt with destroying infectious waste. He said they were not responsible for checking the waste output every hospital.