Jamshedpur: Though the Steel City celebrated World Environment Day on Friday, biomedical wastes continue to liter on bank of River Subernarekha and on the approach road to Dimna Lake on the foothills of
Dalma hill as city-based activists continue to raise concerns.
Biomedical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011, promulgated under the Environment Protection
Act of 1986, put the onus of biomedical waste management on municipal corporations and urban local bodies.
Civic bodies need to provide suitable common disposal or incineration sites while hospitals and others
generating biomedical wastes must take the items to those designated places.
Doing both is imperative for health and human and ecological safety. Hospitals and clinics generate wastes
such as bandages, soiled cotton, body parts, needle, syringes, medicines and so on from wards, operating
theatres and outpatient areas, which need to be collected, segregated and disposed of to prevent contamination and infection.But, on the ground, ignorance and carelessness abound.
City hospitals do not conscientiously follow the biomedical waste disposal norms such as segregation and
destruction of infective items.
An average of 9 -10 tonnes of waste is collected daily, but companies authorised to dispose them estimate
that a similar amount goes to the landfill, which is against rules.
The president of Jamshedpur-based Jharkhand Human Rights Conference, Manoj Mishra said most organisations and civic bodies did not care.
“Hospitals, nursing homes and medical shop owners, in the absence of a proper place to dispose of medical
waste, find river banks a convenient dumping ground.
No one thinks of the adverse effect of this on health and ecology. I have met officials of Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee and Mango Notified Area Committee several times but nothing has been done
so far,” he said.
A senior official of Tata Steel Zoological Park said that proper disposal of biomedical waste is important.
As littering the waste might lead to danger for animals, both carnivores and herbivores.
The waste is threat for cows and scavengers like crow and carnivores like dogs. The Bio-medical Management and Handling Rules, specifies that biomedical waste should be dumped in a place, which is
at least 2.5 km from the hospital, and should be treated in a waste disposal plant.
Jharkhand Human Rights Conference chief Manoj Mishra who filed a PIL at Jharkhand High Court
against improper disposal of biomedical waste in the state in 2012, said that it is matter of great concern that
waste is being littered and several animals have died after consuming wastes .
We have decided to visit the site again. ” It should be made mandatory for every hospital and clinic, even those without beds, to dispose biomedical waste by the prescribed method.
Otherwise waste would be considered an expense,” said a source. In a government hospital, nurses said they do not stringently follow the rule for breaking the needle from the syringe as they are afraid of the
smoke the machine produces.
“Ideally, we should break the needle and shred the hub but we don’t do that as we fear it may damage
the machine,” the nurse said.
