RAWALPINDI: The Punjab Environment Protection Agency has issued notices to 30 government and private hospitals under the Punjab Hospital Waste Management Rules 2014 in a bid to put an end to improper disposal of hazardous hospital waste.

According to officials of the Punjab EPA, the hospitals and clinics have failed to properly dump the clinical waste on their premises providing opportunities for scavengers to collect the hazardous material, exposing them to danger. Due to improper dumping of clinical waste, the business of recycling plastic items is increasing, they claimed.

In order to discourage this practice, the EPA raided three junkyards on Sunday where hospital waste was dumped and lodged cases against the owners at the Dhamial police station.

EPA Deputy Director Maria Safir said the EPA initiated action against those who were involved in the illegal sale and purchase of hospital waste instead of incinerating it. She said a mini-truck loaded with clinical waste was also found in Dhamial which was being dumped at a solid waste collection point.

Three junkyards raided, cases lodged with Dhamial police

According to the deputy director, the EPA will continue to take legal action against the alleged mafia involved in the sale of such waste.

EPA Inspector Inamullah said private hospitals and clinics were involved in the dumping of clinical waste along with solid waste, which was putting the lives and health of scavengers and the sanitation staff in danger because they could contract infectious diseases by coming into contact with this waste.

He said the EPA teams initially conducted site inspections and sent a report to Lahore to take action against 30 private and public sector hospitals in the garrison city.

According to the Punjab Environmental Protection Act 1997 (amended 2012), clinical waste should not be mixed with solid waste and should be disposed of properly. The Punjab Hospital Waste Management Rule 2005 also made it clear that all the infectious material generated in hospitals should be sent to an incinerator. Under the law, the district health department is responsible for ensuring the implementation of the law and dumping of clinical waste in their respective areas. However, in the garrison city, there was no enforcement of the law.

It may be noted that the garrison city has an incinerator at Holy Family Hospital (HFH) to burn the waste produced by the public and private sector clinics and hospitals but it had not been utilised for the past 10 months – from October 2023 to August 10, 2024 – due to the revamping of the public sector hospital. It started functioning by the end of August.

The incinerator service was free of cost for government hospitals; however, the board of management at Rawalpindi Medical University had fixed a fee of Rs20 per kg for private hospitals and clinics. In case they also used the transport of the incinerator centre, the fee was Rs25 per kg.

In Feb this year, a vendor hired by the Pims administration in Islamabad to incinerate medical waste on the hospital premises was found involved in the sale of infectious material, such as discarded syringes and blood bags.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2024