Biomedical waste turns more hazardous amid pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has already turned healthy places around the world into living hells with massive deaths because of its fast-spreading nature, and continuously resulting lockdowns in almost every part of the world.

Amid all the problems it has created so far, the significant problem of handling medical waste could create major havoc in a densely populated city like Dhaka.

Recently the Tongi police station (East) investigated a dangerous case. A man, Nasir, was convicted on charges of recycling used masks and hand gloves that the hospitals in Tongi, Uttara and Gazipur had thrown away as waste.

Amid huge demand for surgical masks and gloves in the market during this crisis period, Nasir collected these from the hospital waste dumps and washed bloodstains off with shampoo. Locals discovered his secret business when he sent the masks and gloves to a local laundry for ironing. The police then came to know about this heinous act.

It is when hospitals are careless in medical waste disposal, failing to adopt proper safety measures, that these unscrupulous and irresponsible people commit such reprehensible acts. The masks and gloves are just two items among thousands of tonnes of medical waste that are disposed of in such a poor manner.

China’s Wuhan, the first of the cities that was viciously attacked by the pandemic, is home to 11 million people. Its hospitals produced more than 240 tonnes of medical waste daily during the peak of the outbreak compared with 40 tonnes before the epidemic occurred, according to China’s ecology and environment ministry’s emergency office.

To fight this enormous amount of medical waste, China’s central government deployed 46 mobile medical waste treatment facilities to Wuhan and built a new plant with a capacity of 30 tonnes within 15 days in March.

In India, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has recently released specific guidelines for handling and safe disposal of biomedical waste generated during the diagnosis, treatment and quarantine period of patients confirmed or suspected to have the COVID-19.

Though the country already had Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules (enacted in 2016), the new CPCB guidelines were released to ensure that the wastes generated specifically during testing of people and treatment of COVID-19 patients is disposed of in a scientific manner.

Biomedical waste is hazardous because it hosts potential virus particles that can be hidden beneath human tissue, n blood bags, needles, syringes or any other sharp object, body fluids on dressings, plaster casts, cotton swabs, bedding contaminated with blood, body fluid and so on.

Although Bangladesh has not yet reached the COVID-19 death count of Wuhan in China, New York in the United States or the European countries like Italy, Spain and France, medical waste management s an issue to think about.

According to the Medical Waste (Management and Processing) Rules 2008, "medical waste could not be mixed with other waste at any stage -- while producing inside hospitals, while collecting from hospitals, while transporting, and would be processed separately based on classification".

Experts say medical waste is not like other waste such as the household or industrial waste. It can infect one directly through the skin or by ingestion and inhalation with objects like inhalers or ventilating pipes.

Many contagious viruses including HIV and Hepatitis (B and C) can easily be generated from such waste and can harm people who do not have the diseases. Germs and viruses, which are antibiotic-resistant (such as the COVID-19 at this point) can easily spread from medical waste.

"Most of the time we observe public health outbreaks such as cholera, typhoid, pneumonia etc. or even sexually transmitted diseases like HIV - and we blame the polluted environment, human nature and behaviour. But it’s not always the water or air, but can be sourced from medical waste too," professor Md Abdul Mannan, a Fellow of WHO on HIV AIDS (Bangkok) and Head of the Department of Dermatology and Venereology at Comilla Medical College Hospital told news agency UNB.

The rules, as can be seen, contain no specific mention about the waste that is produced from the COVID-19 patients in home quarantine.

The vast number of COVID-19 cases was unimaginable at the time when the rules made and current situation certainly demands new guidelines. Improper medical waste disposal can create immense havoc in Bangladesh, one of the most densely-populated countries in the world.

Several private and public hospitals in the city have often claimed to follow proper waste management methods. However, cases like the disposable mask and glove 'recycling' crime are waking the the hospital authorities up to the need for properly managing medical waste.

If the massive amount of medical waste cannot be managed through proper guidelines, chances of community-based spreading of COVID-19 can exceed the limits and take more lives in the coming days.