Rajshahi Medical College Hospital, the biggest healthcare facility in the north-region, and others public and private hospitals in the city bad lack in waste disposal facilities, exposing people to serious health hazards.
The 530-bed Rajshahi Medical College Hospital dumps its garbage in two open brick-built dustbins, built on its premises, said patients and staff at the hospital.
‘Given the size of our dustbins and the bulk of garbage dumped there, they should be cleaned twice a day,’ said a residential medical officer of hospital.
But the city corporation removes the garbage only once a day, he said, adding that the hospital wastes contained among other things bandage, cotton, saline bags, syringes and body parts of the patients who were operated on.
As a result, the hospital premises reek of the garbage, causing serious discomfort to the patients, their attendants, physicians, students and others.
Rafiqul Islam, 32, a patient admitted to the hospital, expressed his irritation at the foul smell spreading from the hospital’s dustbins.
Rabeya Khatun and Abdul Jabbar, who were attending a patient at the hospital, criticised the authorities for their lack of initiatives to keep the hospital premises clean.
‘The hospital ground is littered with cotton, saline bags, fruit skin, food remnants and other wastes. They should be very strict in preventing people from dumping wastes here and there,’ said Rabeya Khatun.
The private clinics and diagnostic centres in the city also do not have any permanent dustbins on their premises. Their authorities said they kept the wastes in drums in their compounds from where the city corporation cleaners collected the wastes.
‘We keep the garbage in an open drum to be collected by the municipality workers,’ said an official of Islami Bank Medical College Hospital, a facility with diagnostic services, adding that they burnt the syringes used on patients having highly contagious diseases.
A physician in condition of anonymity told New Age that the lack of a proper medical waste disposal system could cause spread of diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid and jaundice.
When contacted, director of Rajshahi Medical College Hospital Brigadier General Abdus Sabur Miya denied the allegation and said earlier RMCH campus was very dirty but after he assumed office, he had asked all the staff to keep the hospital premises clean.
-With New Age input
