Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne has obtained land in Muthurajawela through a Cabinet paper to dump clinical waste collected from the state hospitals in the Western Province, a Health Ministry spokesman said.
The private company which collected the clinical waste and destroyed it used a place inside the Mulleriyawa Base Hospital, but the process stopped after a court order prohibiting it. However, the place had the approval of the Central Environmental Authority.
Now the waste disposal company collects the waste and dumps it in another place temporarily, while destroying it gradually, using the system of the Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital.
Meanwhile, the clinical waste issue of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL) will be solved shortly, NHSL Director Dr. K. Wickramasinghe told the Daily News yesterday.
The institution which handles the task of removing clinical waste from all state hospitals faced an internal administrative issue recently and as a result it was forced to limit the daily clinical waste removal from all state hospitals and not only from NHSL, Dr. Wickramasinghe said.
But the institution removed clinical waste daily from all state hospitals, including the NHSL, and it is not true that the waste has not been removed for a period of one month.
There was a limit for daily removal and as a result, a part of the clinical waste collected inside the hospital, he said.
Chemicals were added to the waste left inside the hospital in order to maintain hygiene, he said.
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