Segregation of Biomedical Waste in Two Districts of Haryana State

Description

Page: 322-325

Twinkle and Manju Mehta (Department of Family Resource Management, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana)

Biomedical waste (BMW) is any waste produced during the diagnosis, treatment, or immunization of human or animal research activities pertaining to the production or testing of biological or health camps. It follows the cradle-to-grave approach which is characterization, quantification, segregation, storage, transport and treatment of Biomedical Waste. The biomedical waste handling workers of the hospitals bear the responsibility of managing the waste generated in each department of the hospitals. So, a sample of all the workers was selected from each hospital, i.e., comprising of a total of 270 respondents from both the districts, i.e., Rohtak and Hisar (3 hospitals from each district). All the waste handling workers in selected hospitals segregated the chemical waste and discarded medicines and cytotoxic drugs into black bags. Human waste and microbiology and biotechnology wastes were segregated into yellow bags. Liquid waste is segregated into the drains, sharp waste into the blue bags while soiled and solid waste is segregated into red bags in all the hospitals of Rohtak and Hisar districts. Majority of waste-handling workers segregated BW into the right color-coded containers. Thus, the respondents from the hospitals were having good knowledge about the segregation practices. Thus, it can be said that the majority of waste-handling workers were adopting good practices to manage BW in the hospitals. This may be due to the awareness and strictness of hospital administration to comply with the legislation laid by the government.