One normally expects that health institutions be places where infections are cured. But these days that doesn’t seem to be the case in Jammu. Take for example, the Government Chest Diseases Hospital in Jammu, where biomedical waste including used syringes, is littered just on the hospital’s doorstep. Exposed syringes, which can carry infectious diseases like TB, are endangering the life of the inmates and the patients who visit the hospital.

In gross violation of the Bio-medical Waste Management and Handling Rules, most of the health institutions flout these norms, endangering the health of the very patients they are required to treat. More than 9000 kg of hazardous bio-medical waste is generated in the state every day, which hints at the amount of infectious waste that is out there.

In Talab Tilloo area, when it rains and water from the mini canal spills over to the road, the bio-medical waste, thrown in to the mini canal, gets spread over the roads with the swelling waters, exposing the state of the health institutions with regard to their bio-medical waste handling. Similar is the situation of bio-medical waste handling at many places around the SMGS hospital too.

Sources said that even the worn out incinerators in Jammu’s Government Medical College don’t have pollution control devices like the soot filters, due to which the incineration of the bio-medical waste is adding to the pollution level in the city. The few incinerators in some of the government hospitals in Jammu are insufficient in dealing with the large amount of waste generated. Each bed generates a bio-medical waste of nearly 2 kg per day per patient. As Jammu has a collective bed capacity of more than 5800 and Kashmir more than 5000, one can imagine the quantum of bio-medical waste generated on a daily basis.

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