Bio medical waste at Kashmir's SMHS raises a stink

The valley's top General hospital, Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital, is messed up, literally. The hospital lacks a proper waste management plan putting the lives of thousands of patients and sanitation workers at risk. The administration smells the stink but puts a hand to its nose and turns away.

A study titled "Current practices of Bio-Medical Waste Management at SMHS Hospital", co-authored by three top doctors of the hospital including the current Medical Superintendent, Dr Waseem Querishi had found that the lack of proper treatment of the Bio-medical waste (BMW) generated in the hospital is dangerous for patients and sanitation workers. But the administration hardly cares.

"Ironically the hospitals, hoped to bring relief to the sick, are themselves creating health hazards to the community due to the improper management of waste generated in the course of health care activities," the study notes.

The study was published in September 2004 but to this day no effort has been made to devise a proper management plan for disposing off the waste even as the number of patients visiting the hospital has increased by thousands since the study was first published.

At present, according to the J-K state Pollution Control Board, the hospital generates more than 700 tonnes of Bio-Medical waste per year that includes soiled dressings, swabs, cotton, blood and other body fluids, dissected body organs and tissues, disposable syringes, I/V fluid bottles, Ryles tubes, injection vials, needles, blades, scalpels, lab reagents, glass slides, Radiographic dyes, discarded films, discarded medicine and paper wastes.

"The BMW generated is not segregated and is either burnt in an incinerator or lifted by the Srinagar Municipal Corporation for open dumping (or land filling), thus not fulfilling the requirements envisaged in Bio-Medical Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules 1998," the doctors found out. "The waste generated is not subjected to any treatment from the site of production to the site of storage near the incinerator. Occasionally, lime is sprinkled at the dumping site".

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