The Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board's (JSPCB) regional office organised a workshop on 'Effective management of biomedical waste and implementation of QR code' at the Adityapur Small Industries Association (ASIA) hall on Thursday.
A team from JSPCB including its regional officer Suresh Paswan attended the workshop. More than 100 health care facility representatives in all the three districts of Kolhan took part in the workshop.
During the workshop the hospital representatives were explained how to weigh everyday waste using a digital platform Safe bio.
Founder of Safe Bio Ashok Kumar from Delhi who has partnered with the JSPCB for tracking and monitoring of biomedical waste explained the process to the representatives.
"Bio medical waste management is the need of the hour. Many hospitals are not following a method to safely dispose the biomedical waste and thus this tracking system was necessary.
Everything will be managed digitally. From picking up the waste to its disposal. Everything will be tracked and reported on an everyday basis. In fact biomedical waste needs to be disposed of within 48 hours," said Paswan.
As per our plans the healthcare facilities (HCF) will need to first register themselves on a particular link given on the JSPCB website following which they will receive four different QR codes through courier.
These QR code stickers will be put on the bio waste baskets of four colours- yellow, red, blue and white.
They shall also then download and register on the Safebio mobile app to get a login id and password.
After the waste collection per day, the QR codes need to be scanned before picked up by the Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment Facility (CBMWTF). The JSPCB shall charge Rs 7 per bed for each HCF for the service. Kolhan division currently has around 357 HCF which will need to follow the new system.
“Bio-medical wastes like used gauze and bandages lying strewn, used injection syringes lying scattered and parts of human bodies like placenta are lying exposed on the hospital premises, causing serious environmental hazards. At a several places, water-logging has generated ground for mosquito breeding.
Uncleaned lavatories and shippage of rain water are also emitting offending smell throughout the hospital premises. Immediate steps must be taken to ensure that new incinerator is set up,” said a Manoj Kumar, a human rights activist.
He noted that hazardous healthcare waste (also known as healthcare risk waste) needs special regulation, but general wastes can be dealt with by municipal waste disposal mechanisms. There are different categories of healthcare waste.
The one way to prevent the spread is proper biomedical waste disposal and adoption of universal precautions. Every surface in a healthcare setting needs to be assumed infected unless proven otherwise.
