The New Nation - Internet Edition

Chittagong Correspondent

Indiscriminate dumping of clinical wastes has not only making the environment unfit for the people, but also appearing as a threat to the public health safety here in the port city.

Health experts feared that outbreak of infectious disease among the citizens might happen at any time out of the carelessly dumped clinical wastes produced at the hospitals, clinics, diagnosis centers and pathological laboratories.

More than 400 hospitals and clinics of public and private origin are now operating in the port city. The un-incinerated pathological wastes may cause bacteria and virus infections including Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Hepatitis-B and C, tuberculosis and so on.

Neither the hospital management, nor the overseers of the health delivery systems has yet to design comprehensive policy for dumping of clinical waste and setting up incinerator at the hospital premises.

Sources alleged that, the mushrooming of unauthorized clinical laboratories apart from the public hospitals and health delivery units around Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Chawk Bazaar, Jamal Khan, Chatteswari Road, Gol Pahar, Mehedibag, Baizid Bostami Road, Halisahar, Sheikh Mujib Road, Oxyzen, Surson Road, Momin Road, Chandgaon, Muradpur and some other areas had mainly been responsible for the hazards.

Majority of the pathological and diagnosis laboratories are reportedly operating the business defying the Private Clinic and Laboratory Act 1982. Sources at the civil surgeon's office claimed that only 10 percent of the existing clinical laboratories had required approval.

According to informed sources the clinics and laboratories are putting a good number of bags of intravenous and intramuscularly fluids, broken ampoules, body fluids, syringes, blood, bandages, sews as waste everyday.

Apart from this, chemicals, tested pathological waste, sharp abandoned equipment used for diagnosis and surgery and abandoned human organs are also among the clinical trash.

Sources said, that about two metric tons of pathological wastes were produce a day. A recent field survey revealed that nearly 90 percent of the hospital waste had been dumped into the roadside trash in an unhygienic way.

The field study says 25 percent of the total dumps is Goss, 20 percent is cotton, 35 percent is damaged foods, used syringe, 10 percent is abandoned bottle and other medical tools and the rest 15 percent is the wastes of other forms.

Approximately, 60 percent of the patients are careless of the toxic clinical wastes while nearly 35 percent people are really worried of their environment and the ultimate health status.

Interestingly enough, most of the healthcare delivery units of both public and private sectors are also careless of the issue.

The callousness of the health workers, organized groups are out to collect used syringe, empty blood-bags or containers of different intravenous and intramuscularly fluids and other medical tools for recycling.

A clinical waste management expert at Chittagong University (CU) said that the medical wastes had always been different than the other forms of wastes and dangerous as well.

"The clinical waste can be a threat to the public health as those are absorbed in the subsoil water, soil and air," the expert feared.