KARACHI, Jan 2: A good frame-work for hospital waste management is an absolute necessity to raise the standards of health and environment in the country, according to provincial ombudsman Justice (Rtd) Haziqul Khairi.
“It is our moral and ethical duty to adhere to the highest possible practices of safe collection, storage and eventual disposal of any hospital waste that might cause harm to human beings”, said the ombudsman while inaugurating a seminar on ‘Hospital Waste Management’ held at Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology.
Justice Haziqul Khairi pointed out that during the past two years as ombudsman Sindh he had received a very large number of private complaints pertaining to solid and hospital waste.
He said the print and electronic media also brought to focus the fatal consequences of the failure and neglect of municipal authorities and public and private hospitals to deal with them in an effective matter.
This, he said, prompted him to invoke Section (3) of the Establishment of the Office of Ombudsman for the Province of Sindh Act, 1991 and hold an all Pakistan seminar on waste management on 6th October, 2001.
He said the participants of the seminar were unanimous that unless a massive campaign in a big way was launched to make the masses as well as the educated class aware of the effective ways of collection, storage, transportation and final disposal of solid and hospital waste, the real objective of making our environment clean and healthy could not be achieved.
Justice Haziqul Khairi said the hospitals, clinics, maternity homes and pathological laboratories in the city were estimated to be producing abut 15 tons of hospital waste per day on an average, which came to around 4000 tons per year. Though a small portion of it was hazardous and infectious, not segregated properly at the source by municipal agencies, 100 per cent of hospital waste become infectious and might cause Hepatitis.
Hospital waste, he told the gathering, posed a grave health risk not only to the hospital and municipal staff handing it but also to the public at large. Special care needed to be taken while disposing of its harmful components like needles, syringes, cotton bandages/ dressings and blood bags.
There was neither its proper collection, nor systematic transformation, and its disposal was made in a manner which created serious environmental problems, he observed.
He noted that out of all the private hospitals, clinics and pathological laboratories, around 400 in Karachi alone, the only Agha Khan University Hospital had its own incinerators while others depended on the two incinerators of the KMC, out of which only one was functioning with a potential capacity of 10 tons per day. In the public sector only the Civil Hospital and the Jinnah Post Medical Centre had installed incinerators.
He said it was now learnt that the law relating to hospital waste management was in the offing and environmental tribunals constituted under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act would also start functioning.
Moreover, he continued, incineration being expensive, better and latest methods like steam sterilization in the autoclaves, treatment by chemicals or micro organisms before dumping the hospital waste in the land fill areas was being widely practised. This, he said, reduced the incidence of air pollution by rubbish.
Earlier in his remarks, chancellor SSUET, Z.A. Nizami said that the Sir Syed University had planned to establish an institute of environment without seeking any government assistance. Vice-chancellor Dr Prof Syed Nazir Ahmed spoke about the University’s performance.—APP