PESHAWAR, Nov 17: The Environment Protection Agency has proposed that registration of those private hospitals, maternity homes and laboratories should be cancelled which do not conform to the standard procedure outlined for waste disposal in the draft Hospital Waste Management Rules 2003.

The EPA made these recommendations in an inspection report on the hospital waste management in major hospitals of Peshawar. "All private hospitals, maternity homes and clinical laboratories should be forced to install their own facility or utilize the incineration facility in Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex," says the report.

It said the EDO (Health) Peshawar had already been asked for action on the issue. An EPA official said that hospital waste disposal was an important issue that needed to be taken seriously.

He said an affordable 'hospital waste disposal system' should be developed and implemented immediately. He said majority of private hospitals and clinics did not have a proper waste disposal facility.

In most of hospitals, he said, there was no proper waste collection system, no proper system of separation of different waste material, no labelling or identification system of containers, no specific area marked for infectious waste, no outside proper contractor who could pick up the waste and no record keeping about the waste disposal.

The official stressed the need for awareness and training of nurses and other staffers on the waste disposal. Each town administration, he said, should ensure that the municipal waste did not get mix with the hospital waste. -APP