Chandigarh, August 1
The Chandigarh administration has rejected a proposal of the GMCH, Sector 32, to install a high-capacity incinerator to treat biomedical waste.
The 500-bed hospital generates around 250 kg of waste daily and the existing facility is inadequate to treat it. The incinerator can treat only 10 kg of waste per hour.
The hospital authorities have no option but to transport the waste to the Sector 16 Government Multi-Specialty Hospital which caters to the waste generated by various government hospital and dispensaries.
The administration has rejected the proposal citing stringent provisions of the central pollution control board which allows incinerators only at common biomedical waste treatment facility.
Sources said the Biomedical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1998, states that installation of individual incineration facility by a healthcare unit shall be discouraged as far as possible but approval might be granted in certain inevitable situations where no option was available.
A senior official in the Sector 16 hospital said they had been told that treating the waste from the Sector 32 hospital was a temporary arrangement. Around 1 quintal of waste was being generated at the Sector 16 hospital alone. “In case we are asked to regularly treat the waste from the other hospital, it would put load on our infrastructure as our own requirement is increasing,” he said.
Recently, untreated biomedical waste being stacked at the Sector 32 hospital had attracted a notice from the Chandigarh pollution control committee. “Since a pollution control device is being installed in the Sector 16 hospital incinerator, the waste from the Sector 32 hospital could not be transported,” an official said.
The pollution control committee has again granted permission to the GMCH to transport the waste to the Sector 16 hospital. Sources said an arrangement to treat the waste at the PGI was also being worked out.
Meanwhile, an operation theatre complex comprising seven operating theatres, pre-operative room, doctors lounge, a central lobby and a post-operative recovery ward was inaugurated at the GMCH today.
Prof H.M. Swami, director principal, inaugurated the complex.