Hospital waste spreading hepatitis

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Hospital waste spreading hepatitis

Monday, December 24, 2007KarachiHepatitis-C is rapidly spreading among large number of young garbage pickers/ scavengers, as they pick used syringes and other clinical waste from different public/ private hospitals of the city for recycling, said Additional Secretary Health Dr Iqbal Saeed Khan.Talking to PPI, Khan said that poor enforcement of Hospitals Waste Management Rules (HWMR) 2006 is responsible for this sorry state of affairs and behind the spread of diseases amongst wider sections of population. Khan, also the former Director General of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) further said that majority of the hospitals in the city are not properly disposing their infectious clinical waste.Consequently, vulnerable children and youth, who pick recyclable things from garbage dumps, get cuts and bruises, which transmit viruses and bacteria into them. “Random study of different hospitals suggests that over 50,000 garbage collectors mainly young Afghani children are suspected to be hepatitis -positive,” he said.Khan regretted that even those hospitals that have incinerators were not segregating infectious and non-infectious waste before putting it in incinerators.Director EPA, Kiran Noman when contacted said that the EPA is short of staff to monitor and enforce HWMR 2006 and there is a ban on recruitment. “But now we have got 10 monitoring inspectors, who would inspect and ensure enforcement of HWMR 2006 in Karachi,” she informed. Special Secretary Public Health Sindh, Dr Captain Abdul Majid said that health department has received hints of some organised business of medical waste going on behind the Sobhraj Maternity Home, Saddar, but no one has been caught yet. Moreover, most of the renowned public hospitals in Karachi have incinerators but smaller hospitals and dispensaries are yet to get incinerators or connected with such facilities of the larger hospitals. “Sindh government had proposed to the federal government three months ago to legislate for use of ‘auto-destructive syringes’, so that the issue of re-use of disposable syringes could be ended,” he added. Majid held “quacks” responsible for the situation, saying, “they are the final beneficiaries of the recycle-able clinical waste trade.” However, he regretted that he could not go “too far” for the accountability of these quacks. “We can only lodge an FIR against some one according to Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) rules, which are not too effective, and these quacks re-start their business after some days,” Majid said. He quoted the example of hepatitis epidemic in Kambar district of Sindh due to abundance of quacks there. He also affirmed that 50 per cent of hepatitis/ HIV/ Aids patients in the province have caught these diseases from infectious injection or misuse of injections.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=87554