Education for Healthcare Waste Management in India

Abstract

Health is linked to amenities like clean drinking water, sewerage systems, poverty, literacy levels and infrastructure. Higher government spending on health care can result in lower incidence of diseases especially communicable ailments. According to ‘Healthcare in India’ published by the Foundation for Research in Community Health, among the leading causes of deaths in India, communicable diseases especially infectious, parasitic, gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases make up 43.3%. Tuberculosis (TB) accounts for a loss of approximately 11 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs). It remains one of the leading causes of disease and death in India in spite of the National TB program (NTP) being in place for over 30 years. Similarly, there are an estimated 4–5 million people infected with HIV in India today. Nearly one in every 150 adults in India is infected. Prevalence of HIV infection has been on the rise in practically all states and all population groups in India. HIV is also spreading rapidly in rural India as in urban areas. New health problems such as drug resistant forms of several communicable diseases have emerged, including malaria, filariasis and multi-drug resistant TB. Hepatitis B and C are other major health problems with an estimated 350 million carriers in the world today. Of these 43 million are in India and 200,000 people die every year due to these deadly diseases. Many of the communicable diseases are spread through the environment, through particulate matter or aerosols in the air, through water and food. They are also transmitted through untreated waste – biomedical and others, which often act as carriers or vehicles for microorganisms and cause injury to the people handling these wastes thus creating a portal of entry for these pathogens. The environment is also the reservoir for many unwanted chemicals, which are genotoxins and these