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| Secure biomedical waste disposal |
| Needles, syringes and medicine vials dumped along the Kurichi Tank in the city
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| INDIA
, 21-February-2007
1:20:19 AM |
| For over a year, the common facility at Orattukuppai on the city's outskirts burns in an incinerator or buries in a deep pit the biomedical waste from private hospitals in Coimbatore and Sathyamangalam (Erode district). But the Government hospitals are yet to join the programme for centralised disposal, according to sources involved in the disposal programme.
About 99 per cent of the nearly 300 private hospitals, clinics and laboratories are said to be handing over their hazardous waste to the facility run by a private operator: over 1.5 tonnes of waste a day. Of this, 400 kg can be burned away in the incinerator. The rest are disinfected through a high-pressure steam process in an autoclave and buried deep in a pit on the facility's two-acre premises.
Glass and plastic waste are shredded and handed over to Government certified recycle units. Needles can be turned into ash on hotplates at the hospitals. Or, they can be disinfected using hypochloride solution and handed over to the facility where it will be put in the autoclave and then buried.
Those who have not joined the common programme are small clinics in remote areas, the sources say. The programme is still open to them. These hospitals can tie up with the operator and pay Rs.2.90 a bed a day to have their waste taken away to the facility in trucks with leak-proof containers.
It is learnt that the Government hospitals are only too willing to join the programme. But, they are yet to get Government clearance for the charges they have to pay.
Despite this, the operator is collecting from the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital nearly 60 kg of anatomical waste such as amputated limbs or other growths removed surgically. It is done free of cost for this hospital alone, considering the volume of such waste it generates. Official sources in the hospital say that a Government decision on the rates is expected soon so that these medical institutions can also join the disposal system.
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