Kolkata hospital gets closure notice for pollution
By IANSWednesday, April 28, 2010
KOLKATA - Clamping down on healthcare units for improper handling of bio-medical waste, the West Bengal Pollution Control Board has issued closure notice to a private hospital and issued notices to three state-run hospitals.
Biswadeep Mukherjee, law officer of the WBPCB, said the state pollution watchdog has issued closure notice on the 400-bedded Calcutta Medical Research Institute as it was mixing bio-medical waste with municipal waste and dumping it in the garbage.
“They did not pay heed to our repeated show-cause notices,” Mukherjee said.
However, the punishment would come into force a month later if the hospital continued to treat bio-medical waste improperly.
“We don’t want patients admitted to the hospital to suffer,” Mukherjee said.
The government hospitals served show-cause notices are Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, Howrah State General Hospital and Uluberia Sub Divisional Hospital.
However, the CMRI management claimed it followed PCB norms on bio-medical waste. “Some bags may have got interchanged and contents of one were found in the other.”
He said the CMRI personnel will be imparted more training to prevent recurrence of such mistakes.
