‘Measures in place at CMCH’

The Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) has put in place elaborate measures to handle biomedical waste, says the authorities.

The hospital generates more than three tonnes of biomedical waste every month with the daily figure being close to 120 kilograms. It places a lot of emphasis on source-level segregation of waste as this was a key aspect of handling biomedical waste.

Dean S. Revwathy told

The Hindu that colour coded bins have been installed at every single ward and in all of the 24 departments in the hospital. The doctors, nurses, ward boys and paramedical staffs are trained in proper handling of biomedical waste.

Body parts such as amputated hands or legs besides placenta are collected in a yellow bin.

The cottons are put into the blue bin and the syringes, in the red bins.

All the bins have labels specifying the point and the date of origin, and other relevant details. They are stored in separate chamber in the hospital. The biomedical waste is collected on a daily basis by the Government-appointed private agency which handled the disposal, she adds.

The Dean says adequate care is taken to ensure all biomedical waste went into one of the bins to reduce bio-hazard. Additional precautions are taken when handling waste generated from patients with infectious diseases.

The CMCH, which treats patients from several Western districts and even from border districts of Kerala, witnesses around 7,000 outpatients every day, besides 1,200 in-patients.