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Mixing of medical waste with municipal garbage continues unchecked

Kathmandu Metropolitan City has fined at least two private firms within one week for mixing hospital waste with household waste and dumping it in the Bancharedanda landfill. Mixing of medical waste with municipal garbage continues unchecked

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Arjun Poudel

Published at : December 23, 2023

Updated at : December 23, 2023 09:23

Kathmandu

Officials from the Environment Department at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City on Friday detained a garbage truck along with its driver for dumping hazardous hospital waste at the Bancharedanda landfill. The garbage truck and its driver were hired by a firm that collects household waste in the Valley and charges people for the services. “This is the second instance of taking the garbage truck and its driver into custody within one week,” said Rabin Man Shrestha, chief of the department. “We fined the firm Rs50,000 for mixing up hazardous hospital waste in the previous case and will impose the same fine on others as well.” Hospital waste management is an important, but neglected issue in Kathmandu.

Officials said that private health facilities— hospitals, nursing homes, polyclinics, laboratories, and state-run health facilities also discard hazardous medical waste mixing up with household waste. “Not only the metropolis’s cleaning staff but also ragpickers get injured and infected by the needles used in the health facilities,” said Shrestha.

“The risks of spread of infections in communities grow when hazardous waste is mixed up with household waste.” Many health facilities including state run hospitals do not have their waste disposal system. Doctors say mixing hospital waste with household waste poses a serious threat of spreading infections— HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, tuberculosis, tetanus, and coronavirus —to those handling the waste. It is estimated that there are over 2,100 health facilities—hospitals, nursing homes, polyclinics, and laboratories in operation in KMC alone. Officials said that the majority of such health facilities have not obtained permission to operate. “None of the health facilities has taken permission to run from the Kathmandu Metropolitan City,” said Ram Prasad Poudel, chief of KMC’s Health Department.

“Around 25 percent of the health facilities might have taken permission from the Health Office Kathmandu, but licenses of most of the facilities have already expired.” KMC officials said almost all private health facilities have been discarding hazardous medical waste by mixing it with household waste. Some also burn such waste in the open, according to them. Experts say burning medical waste is the worst idea as it can produce dioxin, furan and other hazardous chemicals, which can even cause cancer. Pathological waste contains harmful micro-organisms—bacteria and viruses— which can easily spread in public, if not managed properly.

“Both burning and mixing medical and household waste is a crime,” said Poudel. “Since a lot of private clinics and laboratories are running without a licence, we don’t know how they are disposing of their medical waste.” A report published by the Ministry of Health and Population in 2020 showed that burning, burying and disposing of hazardous immunisation waste and mixing it with municipal waste by private hospitals was rampant. The study titled, “Assessment of Immunisation Services in the Private Sector in Kathmandu Valley”, carried out by a consortium of Atlanta’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University, John Snow Institute and the Health Ministry, showed that only 7.7 percent of private health facilities were found practising the disinfection and recycling method.

According to the study, 19.2 percent of private health facilities were found burning immunisation waste, 15.4 percent were disposing of hazardous immunisation waste along with municipal waste and 2 percent of health facilities were found burying hazardous needles. The World Health Organization says hazardous waste poses many health risks such as the potential to inflict physical injury (stabs from sharp and pointed items such as needles), chemical burns, toxic exposure to pharmaceuticals, radiation exposure, and exposure to infectious and disease-causing micro-organisms.

Arjun Poudel
Arjun Poudel is a health reporter for The Kathmandu Post. Before joining the Post, he worked for Sagarmatha Television, Naya Patrika, Republica and The Himalayan Times.