The Indian Medical Association (IMA), Tamil Nadu chapter, has selected a site at Thenmelpakkam village near Singaperumal Koil near Chennai to establish a common bio-medical waste facility. The common bio-medical facility will consist of an autoclave, shredder, compactor, incinerator and a sanitary landfill.

The site for setting up the common bio-medical facility has been identified after a gap of one year, after the IMA, Tamil Nadu chapter assured the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) that it would identify the site for the bio-medical facility to facilitate hospitals in the metro to safely dispose of their bio-medical waste as per the Bio-Waste Disposal Rules, 1998.

The facility, as approved by the TNPCB, is to be commissioned within a span of six months, according to IMA sources. The IMA, according to the sources, will now ask hospitals in the metro to become members of the facility for a fee, which is still to be decided. Once the facility is commissioned, hospitals, whether they become member or not, will have to dispose of the bio-medical wastes collected from their respective premises at the common facility only. The task of segregating bio-medical waste from other waste will lie on each hospital, according to IMA sources. Further modalities concerning transport of the waste to the site and other related aspects are to be worked out.

Consequent to the identification of the site and the assurance that the facility will be commissioned within six months, the TNPCB has asked respective hospitals not to set up their own incinerators and use the common facility. The contention of the TNPCB is that most hospitals are located in residential areas and hence setting up own incinerator would pose health hazard to the population.

The yet to be commissioned facility is the second such facility that is expected to come up in and around Chennai. There is still no progress with the first facility to be set up by a private party, Healing Medicaids. Though the site for setting up the facility has been identified, at Melakottiyur, acquisition of land is still not done yet.

Meanwhile, the TNPCB has issued strict warning to hospitals, which have not yet applied for consent from it to operate their units.