Bureaucratic tangles hits biomed waste

Officials told to increase survey; ensure waste is collected at the earliest from hospitals

Bureaucratic tangles and fights between agencies has led to issues in the collection of biomedical waste in Telangana, leading to it accumulating in hospitals.

The Telangana pollution control board (TPCB), which handles waste via its agencies, states that they have been issued guidelines but they are not being followed and each officer and agency is pushing the blame on others.

In Karimnagar, one agency has complained against another for overloading it as the biomedical waste is very high and the other agency has refused to take up the extra work citing diesel prices.

A senior health official of TS explained, “Earlier, hospitals would manage their own waste but there were complaints that small and medium-size hospitals cannot handle it. Due to this reason, it was handed over to the TPCB. In normal times, it was managed by them but they require extra training and also adequate machines and systems to handle waste during the pandemic. Agencies have to invest in new machines to burn different biomedical waste separately. Instead, protocols have been sent to them but no training or no extra infrastructure has been put in place. This is leading to problems at the ground level, apart from the operational costs and personpower challenges faced by them.”

Each district has two agencies who have been allotted hospitals, public health centres and small nursing homes.

These are placed in different corners and require a good amount of travel, involving diesel and personpower costs. Due to Covid-19 and the rising cases in district government hospitals and PHCs, generation of waste has doubled. In private hospitals it is lesser but still requires safe disposal.

The agencies are getting only 50 per cent of the amount from the government due to cost cutting and private hospitals are not willing to pay which is creating problems in collection and safe disposal, leading to a chain of problems.

The TPCB has asked all its officers to increase surveillance and ensure that biomedical waste is collected at the earliest, without much delay.

IN KARIMNAGAR, one agency has complained against another for overloading it as the biomedical waste is very high and the other agency has refused to take up the extra work citing diesel prices.