Littering by visitors at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, Amritsar, an open invite to disease outbreak

Amritsar, April 10

If you happen to visit patients’ wards at Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, you will be welcomed by ugly sights of heaps of garbage, especially plastic bags, dropped by attendants of patients and visitors to the hospital.

Safai sevaks of the hospital complain that instead of putting plastic bags and other waste into dustbins, which are placed inside every ward and in the corridors, most visitors find it convenient to throw waste out of the window in the open space near their wards. It not only causes accumulation of garbage but also poses a threat of the outbreak of an epidemic.

While garbage from the dustbins is regularly shifted to the garbage collection points from where it is lifted by workers of the waste management company, garbage heaps in the open spaces adjacent to the wards continue to pile up.

“People must use the dustbins. The hospital has a huge campus but staff is not sufficient to sweep the entire area daily, more so when the focus is on keeping the inside part of the building clean,” said a safai worker.

Hospital employees stated that it is not possible to keep an eye on everyone inside the wards. “Moreover they might feel offended if somebody asks them to not throw waste out of the window,” said a nursing staff member. She said most of the patients coming to the hospital do not take it as their responsibility to keep their surroundings clean.

Hospital officials stated that slogans written on walls asking people to use dustbins and to not throw waste here and there have been painted at various places in all the buildings. Every visitor must not throw waste as it is not possible for the sanitation workers to collect it from the open spaces, stated a doctor, adding that each ward has dustbins to segregate waste so that medical waste does not get mixed with other waste.