SHARP BIOMEDICAL WASTE DISPOSAL IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM

In hospital industries, quite a large quantity of glass items are used and discarded every day and without any proper treatment the same items are disposed in the most unethical manner. We have visited many hospitals in this region and in most of the cases we have observed the hospitals having a practice to sell the empty bottles and other glass items from different departments including pathology department. As a result the chance of reuse of the bottles, vials, Glass slights become more and it may cause serious health hazards at any point of time.

As per Guideline given by Pollution control board. proper autoclaving and shredding are not done in most of the hospitals.  Instead of proper treatment and disposal, the used glass items are sold to the scrubbers/vendors. The vendors take it to the dump site and open the bottles, clean it in dirty water and re-sale it to the various manufacturers. As a result the maximum chances of contamination remain intact.
Solution of this problem is simple, used glass items should be treated in autoclave and there after it should be crushed by a ‘JAW CRASHER’ and disposed in to sharp burial pith. I have the experience of installation of “JAW CRUSHER” in a hospital of Nagaland and the huge quantity of glass bottles, ampules etc are now being disposed easily without any trouble.