Daily Times

KARACHI: In Pakistan’s most populous city of Karachi, around 100 tons of highly infectious hospital waste is generated every day but due to the absence of incinerators, this contagious waste is dumped at open places in parts of the city, Daily Times has learnt.

According to an official record, Karachi has around 50 major hospitals including 11 hospitals administered by Federal Government, 16 hospitals owned by government of Sindh, around 15 administered by Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and 05 are non profit hospitals run by philanthropists and NGOs.

These major hospitals have combine capacity of around 50,000 beds. An international study discloses that every bed generates 1.8 kilograms of such infectious waste in 24 hours that has to be dumped scientifically. It means that the 50 major hospitals in Karachi generate around 100 tons of infectious medical waste in every 24 hours.

In Karachi, public hospitals have no facility to deal with the infectious hospital material in scientific way due to non existence of mechanism, therefore, the waste is thrown openly and it mixes with domestic waste and thus it poses threats to health and environment.

Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC), city’s one of the major hospitals, which produces around 10 tonnes of infectious waste per day, has an outdated incinerator.

“The incinerator machine was installed in year 2000 and is old dated,” Dr Simeen Jamali, Executive Director at JPMC told Daily Times.

“But still we are depending on this. In past Government vowed to provide us new incinerator but it hasn’t reached yet,” she added.

Similarly, Civil Hospital Karachi, which was recently named after Dr Ruth K M Pfau, and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital also lack proper mechanism to dispose of waste.

Health experts stress upon every hospital to have proper waste management system.

According to Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, former Secretary General Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), hospital waste is contaminated with bacteria and viruses and is source of infections for entire community especially for children.

“Dumping the hospital waste in open space is both health and environment hazard for general public. Scientific method to treat the waste is available”, Dr Azhar told.

“The situation has gone so worse that it has become a regular practice in our hospitals that the waste, human body parts, fluids are thrown away at open places,” he lamented.

According to another expert Dr Suleman Otho, a senior chest specialist, since there was no proper system of segregation of hospital waste, hospitals waste has become part of overall waste.

“When you dump hospital waste into city’s landfill sites it becomes the part of solid waste, which is horrifying. Hospital waste reaches at city’s land fill sites and by default solid waste gets infected too”, Dr Otho noted.

In the absence of proper disposal off the hospital waste, bacteria, viruses become part of environment. For instance drinking water gets contaminated which causes the spread of communicable diseases like Typhoid, an infection caused by bacteria that is spread from human to human.

“Take the case of Tuberculosis (TB). If remains of sputum culture test are dumped into the waste it will mix with landfill sites. The bacteria spread through droplets in the saliva or sputum. The reason can be attributed to why Pakistan which is amongst top country in the world with most TB patients could not control the disease”, he added.

The Sindh government has established the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) to maintain a clean and healthy environment and to come down hard on the offenders of the environment laws. Under SEPA laws, the hospitals in Sindh are barred from disposing of hazardous hospital waste in an open or public area that could pose threats to human health and the environment.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah had announced, in budget, to launch Hospital Waste Management Programme at all major hospitals of Sindh at a cost of Rs 75 million.

There is no official data available regarding the total hospital waste production. Recently, Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB), responsible for collection and disposal of municipal sold waste, industrial solid waste, hospital waste and agriculture waste in the entire province, has started a province-wise study to collect the number of the infectious material.

“It is expected that study would conclude before the end of ongoing year,” AD Sajnani, Managing Director SSWMB told.

According to Sanjnani, some foreign experts are also hired for the study to get better results. “At present a team of Korean and local experts is visiting different areas of Sindh”, he informed.

Published in Daily Times, September 12^th 2017.