Locals have accused the hospitals of infesting their localities with hospital waste, and of showing no concern over the direct effect of this upon the environment and on people´s health. [break]
Every day Bharatpur hospital treats around 30 pregnant women and some of the placenta removed during delivery is buried near the hospital. The rest is carried away by the municipality to a dumping site.
Even though Dandapani Poudel of Bharatpur Hospital Management Committee claims to have disposed of the waste properly, locals have rejected this claim.
"The hospital is not clean," said service seeker Amar Regmi, pointing to a nearby drainage, "Aren´t those the stains of human blood and placenta?" Regmi had admitted his pregnant wife to the hospital.
Moreover, body parts of the dead, plaster casks, saline water bottles and other material has been found thrown behind the hospital building. Explaining the situation, Poudel said that waste was left there for the municipality to pick up.
"Discarded syringes can transmit disease to others. For that reason we incinerate them ourselves before letting the municipality throw them in the dumping site," said Poudel.
The hospital administration was found unsure about the quantity of waste discarded from the hospital on a daily basis. Unable to give a definite answer, Kamal Acharya, a section officer at the hospital, said, "Counting needs to be done to determine how much waste is taken out from the hospital."
Dr Kesab Bhurtel, former superintendent of the hospital, admitted the waste management problem.
"This hospital is visited by patients from various other districts beside Chitwan. If we don´t resolve this waste disposal problem soon, many will suffer health problems in the near future," said Dr Bhurtel.
Heavy loads of daily waste coming out of Bharatpur Hospital, Chitwan Medical College and community hospitals are dumped in a community forest not very far from human settlements. This proximity makes locals live in fear of being infected.
Moreover, stray animals feed on and fetch the medical waste back inside the human settlements.
"I was shocked to learn that hospital waste was being brought inside the city by animals on the prowl. The situation should be controlled or the waste will get scattered all over our city," said Dr Bijay Acharya, surgeon at the hospital.
According to Dr Harishchandra Neupane, waste disposal should be managed through mutual coordination among the hospitals and medical centers in the district.
Moreover, the only medical waste incinerator at BP Memorial Cancer Hospital in the district has been reported to be having problems. "Waste management becomes an issue only when the machine malfunctions, but at other times the situation has always been under control," said Dr Bhaktaman Shrestha, chief of the hospital management committee.
The private hospitals and medical centers have also been found discarding their medical waste inside their own premises.
"Let´s buy a 10 katta plot of land and use it as a dumping site," said Narayan Singh Kuwar, deputy chief of the Private Hospitals Coordination Committee, Chitwan.
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