Hospitals, in addition to healing the sick, also produce massive amounts of waste. Those waste products are dangerous. They include sharp items, deadly chemicals, disease laden objects... Normally they are disposed off by burning them.
But in Iraq, the normal does NOT occur. In Iraq, that waste is dumped in fields. In Iraq, due to the poverty, these waste dumps are used by people. People dig through them for items that they can sell for food.
Ali Hassan, a 9-year-old resident of Sadr City, is a regular at the hospital’s waste dump.
"We find very nice things to play with in the hospital rubbish. We find syringes, cotton and empty bottles. Once we found a fetus - that was amazing! We play like we’re doctors. My mother always tells me to train well because one day I could be a good doctor," said Ali.
more after the fold
Medical waste includes: US gov definiation
blood-soaked bandages
culture dishes and other glassware
discarded surgical gloves
discarded surgical instruments
discarded needles used to give shots or draw blood (e.g., medical sharps)
cultures, stocks, swabs used to inoculate cultures
removed body organs (e.g., tonsils, appendices, limbs)
discarded lancets
US military hospitals in Iraq use portable incinerators. From this article: Weeding Out the Waste
Most medical waste among U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is disposed of through portable incinerators.
In 2003, when Hayden was in Iraq, there was no formal process for handling medical waste. "When we first started on ground, there were no real systems for handling regulated medical waste. But eventually things got squared away, through lining up contractors to bring the waste to incineration sites."
One of those incinerators is the MediBurn portable incinerator, manufactured by Elastec/American Marine. Currently more than 60 of them are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, owned by either the U.S. military or contractor Kellogg Brown & Root. It is a small incinerator that runs on diesel fuel and 220 volts of electricity.
and after the incineration is done:
Generally, there’s about 3 percent ash left when the process is finished. "At that point it’s sterilized, so it’s safe to dispose of in a dumpster or any receptacle," explained Pretzsch. It burns at a thousand degrees Celsius. "If you don’t maintain a constant temperature, then you’re not going to be able to destroy most pathogens and other types of diseases."
But... that does not occur in Iraqi run hospitals. A new UN report IRAQ: Medical waste a growing health hazard gives some details about what happens in Iraq. Some quotes:
Raghed Sarmad, 32, and her two children, aged seven and eight, spend their days scavenging through piles of rubbish in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in search of anything they can sell for food. She prefers medical waste, because there is a greater chance of finding items of some value.
Sarmad is oblivious to the numerous diseases they could catch by handling such waste.
"There isn’t much blood in the rubbish [so it’s safe]. We find some good metal things which we can sell in the market. Some people buy syringes with needles from us. I don’t think the needles can harm us because they must have been sterilized already," Sarmad told IRIN while rummaging through medical waste left near the main gate of Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital.
Shudder....
The Hospitals can NOT burn their waste. Why? They do NOT have the fuel to do so. They must save their fuel, so they can run their generators for local electricity. So, they dump the waste nearby.
Why isn't that waste picked up and taken away?
"Rubbish collectors are being targeted because of their sects. Many workers have refused to collect rubbish in areas where they have been threatened," said Khudar Nuridin, media officer at the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works in Baghdad, adding that at least 15 workers had been killed in recent months while collecting rubbish in the capital.
So if the hospitals can't burn their trash and that trash just sits there....
"Over the past year, dozens of children have ended up in our emergency rooms with symptoms of infectious diseases due to contact with waste - some from hospital waste. Poverty is the main cause, but lack of awareness is aggravating the problem," Haydar Khouri, a pediatrician at Sadr City Hospital, said.
"Last week I had a child patient with a [syringe] needle stuck his leg from playing with the hospital rubbish," Khouri added.
I've been looking for something like this report for awhile. And it's just as bad as I feared...
Thank you for reading
jeff