Nagpur reports reduced hospital waste generation during lockdown

Ever since the nationwide lockdown began, Nagpur has reported that biomedical waste from the city’s hospitals and clinics has reduced drastically. In March, the private firm engaged in collecting biomedical waste from 1,800 city establishments including 632 private hospitals/clinics, OPDs, pathology laboratories, radiology centres etc had collected 85,852kg waste. It dropped to 57,520kg in April. However, the quantity went up after NMC started door-to-door biomedical waste collection all over the city and five quarantine centres.

The Times of India reports that according to NMC’s solid waste management department data, from April 1 to May 11, the two firms engaged in doorstep garbage collection, collected 32,589kg biomedical waste — mostly masks and hand gloves. A senior official told TOI many private clinics and hospitals are not operating and hence fall in waste generation.

The official said Government Medical College and Hospital and Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital — the two institutions treating Covid-19 patients — too have their separate biomedical waste treatment plants.

Picture Credit: Gppande, Sitabuldi Market, CC BY-SA 3.0