Health centres must treat bio-waste: Govt

The environment ministry has notified new draft rules making scientifically treating medical waste a must for every health establishment. Chetan Chauhan reports. |Bio-medical waste rules 2011

Updated on: Sep 26, 2011, 01:32:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has notified new draft rules making scientifically treating medical waste a must for every health establishment.

The new rules to be called Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, scraps the earlier provision of making bio-medical waste rules applicable only to institutions providing service to more than 1,000 patients a month.

"Every occupier or operator, irrespective of the number of patients being in services or the quantum of bio-medical waste generated is required to obtain the authorisation," the draft rules notified this week said.

The definition includes waste from animal, laboratories, microbiology and bio-technology, human anatomy and medicines. The rules also prohibit mixing of bio-medical waste with other forms of waste and it will have to be sent for treatment within 48 hours.

The rules clearly mention that every medical service provider will have to set up requisite bio-medical waste treatment equipment prior to the commencement of its operation or will have to make arrangements for treatment of bio-medical waste through an authorised common bio-medical waste treatment facility.

The bio-medical waste treatment facility will have to take approval of either the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) or the state pollution control boards.

The technology to be used in the facility should have approval of CPCB or environment ministry.

The rules makes operator of the bio-medical waste facility liable for action in case of any lapse or damage to the environment.

The new rules once notified will replace the bio-medical waste rules of 1998 and will cover persons who generate, collect, receive, store, transport, treat and dispose and handle bio-medical waste in any form.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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