Three-fold rise in biomedical waste of PDU Covid facility in April

Rajkot: With exponential rise in Covid cases in April the generation of biomedical waste too saw proportional rise. The biomedical waste generated by 920-bed Covid facility of Rajkot’s PDU hospital jumped to 31.5 metric tonne (Mt) in April as compared to January’s 11.97Mt. Cancer Hospital, the other Covid facility in Rajkot, generated 2.841Mt of biomedical waste in April.
Biomedical waste includes items and equipment like PPE kits, masks, syringes and IV sets that are used while treating Covid-19 patients. Biomedical waste is like a ticking bomb that needs to be disposed-off properly to avoid mishaps. It is disposed-off as per the guidelines of Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB). According to hospital administration the Covid waste is discarded in double bags as a precaution.
The PDU is one of the three civil hospitals of Gujarat that disinfects the disposable plastic waste material before sending it for final disposal, a process that involves the items being incinerated at the common facility centre near Kuvadva.
At PDU, the waste material is disinfected in an industrial oven. PDU got this oven under a central government project. “This is a full proof system. Even if this waste doesn’t get incinerated it won’t be risky for the people because it has been disinfected in a microwave oven,” Hitendra Jakhariya, head of bio medical department of PDU hospital, said.
The biomedical waste is segregated and is packed in bags with different colour codes because the disposal process for each waste is different. All kinds of disposable plastic materials are packed in red bags, needles and sharpeners in white bags, dress materials which can be burned are packed in yellow bags and injection vials, glass bottles are packed in blue bags before sending it to a common disposal facility. The waste has to be sent to the disposal facility within 48 hours of generation.
Though the biomedical waste of PDU’s Covid facility has seen a big increase, its general waste has gone down. The general biomedical waste of PDU was 13.191Mt in January which reduced to 10.774Mt in April.