UPDATE

Management of biomedical waste presents a bleak scenario in Uttar Pradesh, owing to the poor implementation of Bio medical waste Rules and improper segregation of waste and lack of awareness in the healthcare sectors. On visits made by Toxics Link in cities like Kanpur and Lucknow, some shocking revelations came to the fore like On-Site incineration happening in one of the biggest hospital in Kanpur i.e. Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital (Hallet) which has the largest O.P.D in Asia. Also, the hospital staffs were ignorant about the Rules.

  Some pertinent issues which came up included:

• Autoclave required maintenance, No segregation of waste before incineration.

• Unequal participation of all stakeholders of hospital.

• Lack of knowledge of the staff members regarding the role of CTF in BMW management.

• Absence of color coded bins.

Ø In Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital, on site incineration was posing a real threat to surrounding.

Ø Lala Lajpat Rai is still not connected to CTF.

Thus, making it imperative to provide training in some hospitals in the state. The trainings were organized in 3 hospitals namely, Lala Lajpat Rai and Associated Hospital (Hallet Hospital) Kanpur, District Hospital,Sitapur, R.K Sindhi Sang Maternity Hospital, Govindnagar, Kanpur were chosen. The training sought to turn these hospitals into model hospital in terms of BMW management. The intervention was done in collaboration with Ganga (regional partner in U.P)

 Two day capacity building session was organized by Toxics link and representative of Ganga were brifed about issues in BMW management. Also, visits were organized in Delhi were they got a chance to see the BMW management practices in the city and a demo of training was given in selected hospital of U.P to help them conduct training sessions. 

The hospitals staffs were given guidelines regarding:

• Segregation of waste, its transportation, management policies, and techniques they can follow to have successful BMW  management program.

• Management of cytotoxic drugs and chemicals.

• Rules and policy for medical institutions.

• Alternate technology for waste management.

Despite having a lot of drawbacks the support from the staffs and their interest in learning tools of BMW management contributed in improving the system. Continuous efforts made by Toxics Link in improving the system and increasing compliance to the BMW rule, translated into some positive actions on ground. Some of the major achievements were:

• Segregation of waste initiated in all hospitals.

• Color coded bins are now in regular use in hospitals.

• Lala Lajpat Rai hospital is in process to connect them to CTF.

-Kankana Das