KATHMANDU, Feb 1: Despite spending Rs 100,000 a month for waste disposal, Paropakar Maternity and Women's Hospital, which is popularly known as Prashuti Griha, used to stink in the past.
Related story
The art of creative reuse : Upcycling waste and upscaling the e...
Chances of spreading infection among the patients were also high then as all the waste produced from wards, operation theaters and delivery rooms used to be dumped on the hospital premises. Stray dogs and crows could be seen scattering waste from the large trash bin placed at one corner of the hospital.
"All the aforementioned scenes are the things of past. Now we have been making Rs 30, 000 a month by selling waste produced from the hospital," Dr Jageshwor Gautam, director at the maternity hospital, said, adding that the hospital no longer mixes hospital waste with the municipal waste. He claimed that the hospital is safe and chances of spreading infection are now slim.Two years ago, a patient had died and about a dozen critical patients had to be transferred to other hospital for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) services after lack of proper hygiene led to an outbreak of infection in the hospital. All the patients admitted to the hospital were forced to leave the hospital, which was shut down for over a week after the incident.
"Now, we are giving utmost priority to the safety of the patients. We segregate the waste into hazardous and non-hazardous categories, sterilize the hazardous waste and then only dispose the hazardous waste," informed director Gautam. If not segregated, 80 % of waste produced from the hospital falls in the hazardous category and the hospital administration used to throw such waste along with the municipal waste. Health experts say that chances of spreading infection among the public is high when the hazardous waste is mixed in the municipal waste.
According to director Gautam, the hospital sends only 20 percent waste out of the hospital after sterilization. The hospital had spent Rs 3.5 million to install an auto-clave machine to sterilize the hospital waste some five months ago. Dr Gautam informed that the money generated from the waste will be spent in the development of the hospital.
Due to weak monitoring from the part of the concerned authorities, almost all the private hospitals and nursing homes in the capital throw hazardous waste along with the municipal waste.
