Biomedical waste management (PDF)

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Environmental Sciences, Amity University, language: English, abstract: "Prevention is better than cure" This is a famous idiom which doctors used to write at the end of the prescription while prescribing medicines to each patients. But what about the biomedical waste containing the germs of sick persons, which is generated from all the medicals and animal institutions while treating the sick persons, animals etc.? All such waste is generally dumped at the outskirts of the city, into rivers or sometimes one can even find it in the municipal dustbin next to any hospitals of any other locality. There, poor people, street dogs and cattle usually search for edible foods by scraping through the dustbin. Sometimes, one can even find a human fetus in the municipal garbage, where street dogs tear it apart to feed on it.

It has been found that rag pickers have previously collected the syringes, glass bottles of the salines, IV drips of bottles and blood bags made of plastics. They sell them to a rag purchaser who uses those bottles for recycling, or sometimes they are sold without recycling if anything like syringes is found intact. While collecting such substances or appliances, sometimes the rag pickers get hurt or pricked from the sharp waste which is dangerous to their health. Moreover, waste sharps may cause tetanus, Hepatitis B and C, AIDS and many other infections if they are not sanitized before disposal.

Recently, biomedical waste management has become a great concern for environmentalists, as there is a great risk of spreading germs in a society, as well as the pollution of the air, water and land if the waste is not managed/treated properly.