Abhishek Kumar Singh
The problem of medical waste was there in the world before, but it has taken a formidable form in the era of COVID. This problem has increased so much that even the World Health Organization has recently issued a warning about it. This organization has said that the COVID epidemic has created a mountain of medical waste in the world. Medical equipment used to deal with the pandemic has become a threat to both humans and the environment.
History tells that there is a way to escape from epidemics. Sometimes they get a solid treatment, sometimes diseases or infectious diseases lose their effect. Many assessments about COVID also say that this disease will be weakened in front of vaccines, medicines and precautions. The World Health Organization has also said recently that if by the middle of this year no new virus of corona has taken hold, then human civilization can be expected to get rid of it to a great extent. But the scars that pandemics leave behind are not easy to get rid of. One such sign has emerged in the form of an epidemic in the form of medical waste in the Corona period which has been stretched for more than two years.
The problem of medical waste was there in the world before, but it has taken a formidable form in the era of COVID. This problem has increased so much that even the World Health Organization has recently issued a warning about it. This organization has said that the COVID epidemic has created a mountain of medical waste in the world. Medical equipment used to deal with the pandemic has become a threat to both humans and the environment.
The reason for this is that the thousands of tons of excess waste accumulated around the world during the treatment of COVID has put serious pressure on the waste management system. In this regard, the World Health Organization has said in a study that more than two lakh tonnes of medical waste has accumulated as a result of the corona virus epidemic all over the world. The problem is even bigger in this that a large part of the waste is made of plastic.
Estimates show that in a year and a half between March 2020 and November 2021, about 1.5 billion PPE kits were distributed under the United Nations for the purpose of protecting medical personnel. Only these kits weigh about eighty seven thousand tons. Most of these protective kits have now turned into garbage. In this waste, thousands of tons of plastic and millions of liters of chemical waste have accumulated in our immediate environment in the form of a risk. At the start of the pandemic, the WHO warned that at least a third of health care centers were not able to dispose of their waste. If we look outside the medical workers, it is known that the face masks adopted as a measure to prevent the corona virus and billions of vials-bottles of sanitizers of all kinds have been generated separately.
An example of this was found last year, when there were reports of the presence of corona prevention kits and other medical items in garbage heaps in different places in the country’s capital Delhi. In view of these, doctors had expressed the apprehension that a major reason for the rapid spread of corona virus in Delhi is due to the lack of proper disposal of biomedical waste of COVID patients. But the problem is not with the waste associated with COVID alone. In this case, complaints have been made over the years that even in private pathology labs and big hospitals, biomedical waste is not properly disposed, due to which animals and humans are also vulnerable to infectious diseases.
The medical waste that has been coming out of private path labs and families living in home quarantine or isolation often ends up in common garbage dumps. A variety of things have been used during the treatment, investigation and isolation of infected people for the corona virus. Most of these things are called biomedical waste. This infected waste contributes more to the spread of the corona virus. By the way, there are clear guidelines for the disposal of all types of medical waste coming out of hospitals. But when people treat a covid patient at home, there is negligence in such a case.
Talking about the rules and regulations in this regard, the amended Rules 2016 of the Biomedical Waste Management and Disposal Act, 1998 gives a provision for this. According to this, in order that there is no disturbance in the disposal of medical waste, it is necessary that after proper sorting of medical waste, the bags in which they are sealed should be bar-coding. With this, online monitoring of medical waste generated from each hospital could be possible. Despite this, this waste often reaches the open dumpsters, rivers and streams, in the fields.
The law provides for imprisonment of up to five years and fine for such negligence. But it is rarely heard that a major hospital or path lab operator has been imprisoned for this. In the last two-three decades, the number of private and government hospitals, nursing homes and path labs in the country including Delhi-NCR has increased manifold. From this it can be estimated how many times the amount of medical waste must have increased in this period.
For proper disposal of medical waste, the first rule is that such waste should be sorted according to the standards and sealed in plastic bags of the prescribed color. Gloves and catheters used during treatment are kept in red colored bags and this waste is burnt after eliminating the infection with a device called autoclave. Plastic bags containing medicine cans, injection needles, pieces of glass or knives are placed in blue colored bags and they are burnt or buried under the soil after treating them with chemicals. Black colored bags are used to keep harmful and useless medicines, pesticides etc. Filling the ash in it, the bag is buried by putting soil in a pit.
There is a rule to disinfect most medical waste. Apart from this, there are instructions to eliminate germs with bleaching powder and ethylene oxide. If necessary, the germs of medical waste are also allowed to be eliminated with ultraviolet rays. But despite so many guidelines and arrangements, if the bio-medical of patients from hospitals, clinics, path labs and homes is reaching healthy humans and animals through open dumpsters, then it is clear that health care and monitoring in our country There are many inaccuracies in Tantra’s claims.
It should not be surprising that on one occasion the World Health Organization recorded proper arrangements for monitoring, handling, storing, transporting and recycling hospital waste in eighteen percent of the world’s twenty-four countries, but India was far behind in this matter. was found. Not only government management, if common people are also throwing their masks and gloves like this on the roadside, in the streets, in the public garbage dump in this era of corona virus, then they have to understand that this negligence can give rise to a big crisis. has been
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