Adhere to biomedical waste rules, else face licence cancellation, hospitals told

The health department of Gautam Budh Nagar is going to start a drive to check if all hospitals and nursing homes in the district are following the guidelines of

The health department of Gautam Budh Nagar is going to start a drive to check if all hospitals and nursing homes in the district are following the guidelines of National Green Tribunal in the treatment of biomedical waste.

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According to the officials, there are around 375 small and big nursing homes in the district. All such facilities will have to submit an affidavit by March 15 affirming that they are following all guidelines on biomedical waste.

“We had a meeting Tuesday in which it was decided to start a drive against hospitals which are not following the guidelines. By March 15, all hospitals will have to submit an affidavit after which we will conduct inspections to verify the status,” Dr Anurag Bhargava, chief medical officer, said.

Any hospital found flouting rules and regulations will face cancellation of licence. “We are going to take strict action, such as cancelling licences, if any hospital is found flouting guidelines. We are giving them time till March 15 to take all the required measures to handle biomedical waste,” Bhargava said.

As per the guidelines, nursing homes need to make a provision within the premises for a safe, ventilated and secured location to store segregated biomedical waste in coloured bags or containers so that there is no secondary handling, pilferage of recyclables or accidental spreading by animals.

Biomedical waste from the premises should directly be transported to the common biomedical waste treatment facility or for appropriate treatment and disposal.

It is required to pretreat the laboratory waste, microbiological waste, blood samples and blood bags through disinfection or sterilisation on-site as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) or National AIDs Control Organisation (NACO) guidelines before sending it to the common biomedical waste treatment facility for final disposal. Hospitals have to ensure that the treatment and disposal of liquid waste is in accordance with the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 (6 of 1974).

No treated biomedical waste should be mixed with municipal solid waste. Proper training should be provided to all staff involved in handling biomedical waste at the time of joining and, their training should be updated at least once a year.

Hospitals have to maintain details of training programmes conducted, number of people trained and number of persons yet to be trained as well as measures taken while handling and treating biomedical waste.