PESHAWAR, Feb 18: The NWFP health department has been asked to take steps to make full use of incinerators installed in three city hospitals for safe disposal of waste.

The directive was issued last month after a meeting held under Additional Chief Secretary Mir Laiq Shah to discuss the problem disposal of hazardous waste generated by various public and private hospitals.

The meeting was attended by additional secretaries of finance and planning and development departments, officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and chief executives of teaching hospitals.

Sources privy to the meeting said the director-general of health had been asked through a letter to ensure that hospital waste in Peshawar was properly disposed of and a strategy for safe waste disposal should made for all districts of the province.

To ensure safe disposal of waste generated by private health outlets, the letter asked the health department to offer private institutions incineration services of the three teaching hospitals. The decision was taken in view of a survey jointly conducted by the health department and the EPA regarding hospital waste in Peshawar.

The survey, the sources said, identified seven hospitals/ dispensaries in the vicinity of the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) which produced 189 kilogramme of infectious/ non-infectious waste per day, whereas four private outlets situated closely to the Khyber teaching Hospitals generated 115 kilogramme of waste per day.

The health department has also been allowed to charge Rs30 per kg from private hospitals for incineration of their waste at the LRH, KTH and the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC).

The letter said it was the responsibility of the health department to ensure safe transportation of waste from a hospital to an incinerator. The health department has been asked to issue directives to the KTH, LRH and HMC to install separate gas metres for incinerators to calculate the actual cost of incineration for private outlets. The health department, the letter said, should make proper provision for recurring cost on this account for the approval of the finance department.

Government health facilities in other parts of the province, wishing to use incinerators for disposal of their waste, were required to submit requests to the finance department for provision of funds so that incineration charges could be paid.

The letter asked the health department to arrange a vehicle to transport waste to a hospital on alternate days, the sources said. The authorities expressed concern over the failure of hospitals to dispose of waste properly which was posing threats to the lives of the people. It asked the health department to ensure that these incinerators were used by both public and private sector hospitals.

"The additional chief secretary has asked the health department to conduct a survey throughout the province regarding hospital waste and make arrangements for incineration in consultation with stakeholders," an official said, quoting the letter which also asked the health department and the EPA to make sure that all private hospitals disposed of their waste through incineration.

"The health department should make a mandatory provision for the registration of private health facilities in future regarding the disposal of their toxic and non-toxic waste," it said.

The letter said infectious waste contaminated by pathogens and non-infectious waste like papers, cardboard, food, packing material and aerosols besides pathogens like tissues, organs, body parts, foetus, blood and body fluids and pharmaceutical waste, syringes, sharps and scalpels and liquid and solid gases should be transported safely to an incineration site to stop the ailments caused by hospital waste.