Rajshahi Medical College Hospital and other public and private hospitals and clinics in Rajshahi city are running without proper waste disposal facilities posing serious heath hazards to adjacent localities. The 530-bed RMCH, the biggest healthcare facility in the northern region, dumps its medical wastes in two open dustbins built on its premises.‘But the city corporation clears the garbage only once a day,’ said a medical officer of the hospital, adding that the bins should be cleared twice a day as a huge quantity of clinical wastes are dumped there.
He said the hospital wastes include bandage, cotton, saline bags, syringes and amputated parts of patients’ body.
Rafiqul Islam, a patient, expressed his irritation at the odour spreading from the dustbins.
Rabeya Khatun and Abdul Jabbar, who were attending a patient, criticised the authorities for lack of their initiatives to keep the hospital premises clean.
‘The hospital premises is littered with cotton, saline bags, fruit peels, wastage of food and other wastes. They should be very strict in preventing people from dirtying the hospital,’ said Rabeya Khatun.
When contacted, RMCH director brigadier general Saidur Rahman denied the allegation and said the campus was very dirty earlier, but after assuming office, he asked all the staff to keep the hospital premises clean.
The private clinics and diagnostic centres in the divisional city also have no permanent dustbins on their premises.
Authorities said they kept the wastes in drums in their compounds from where the city corporation cleaners collected it.
A physician in condition of anonymity said to the newsmen that the lack of a proper medical waste disposal system could cause spreading of the infectious diseases like diarrhoea, typhoid and jaundice.
-With New Age input
