Chirala: Area hospital fails to comply with biomedical waste disposal norms

Chirala: The Area Hospital at Chirala is allegedly not handling the biomedical waste properly by burning it in a pit on the hospital premises. The authorities are accused of not taking care in disposing of biomedical waste and thus causing a threat to environment and health hazard to people in the vicinity of the hospital.

The used syringes, needles, hand gloves, masks, cannulas, saline bottles, blood-soaked clothes, etc are a common sight to the public who are entering the hospital from its compound from the septic tank side. A group of activits claimed that they had complained to the hospital management several times not to throw the waste in the open as the children could pick them up. However, the staff continued to throw the waste and now burning them in a pit during the night time.

In the early hours of Tuesday, the nearby locals were unable to breathe for a few minutes as the smoke emanating from the combustion of the medical waste troubled them. In the morning they checked the source of the smoke and put the flames off by using water. A person living in a house nearby the hospital said that the septic tank of the hospital is also overflowing time and again but the hospital management is turning a deaf ear to their complaints. He said that this is not the first time they burn the biomedical waste along with the expired and unused medicines.

As per the Environment Protection Act 1986, burning of biomedical waste is a punishable offense. The toxic gases emanating from the waste due to the combination of the chemicals used in medicines like arsenic, lead, cadmium, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, and benzene. Hospital Superintendent Bijinemula Tirupalu said the hospital is in a contract with a person operating incinerator and biomedical waste would be sent to it regularly. He said that some unknown persons had thrown the waste outside the hospital and burnt it on Monday night.