KARACHI, July 20: Experts have called upon the authorities concerned to ensure that relevant rules and regulations are strictly enforced and complied by all hospitals, clinics, laboratories as well as radiology units functioning across the province. Dr Iqbal Said Khan of Sindh Environmental Protection Agency talking to APP here on Wednesday mentioned that disregard to safe and proper disposal of hospital waste had emerged as a major health risk to the masses. He said that inadequate provision on part of large majority of health care, diagnostic and research facilities were witnessed to a wide range of health-related issues.

Elaborating his stance, he said that plastic containing waste when burnt emitted “dioxin” that could cause cancer, birth defects, decreased psychomotor ability hearing defects and so forth.

The environmentalist reminded that wide range of options were available for safe disposal of all sorts of hospital waste, but ignorance and negligence on part of hospital administrators and concerned managers of relevant institutions cause absolute non-compliance to law, meant for public benefit in general and safe environment in particular.

Dr Kamran Aziz, a physician, supplementing the statement of Dr Iqbal specifically referred to heaps of garbage witnessed around many of the mentioned facilities, with dogs, cats and rats living in and moving around transmitting varied sordid diseases as plague.

He also referred to flies on the uncovered piles of rotting garbage - promoting transmission of several other fatal diseases as diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis and cholera.

The health care providers said that all concerned institutions should take due care for minimization of hospital waste, which must also be properly segregated and efficiently handled by well-trained staffers. —APP