Member Secretary of AP Pollution Control Board (APPCB) Vivek Yadav said on Tuesday that committees have been formed at the State and district levels for the effective implementation of Bio-Medical Waste Management (BMW) Rules.

At the inaugural of a zonal workshop on Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules-2016, organised by APPCB, Visakahapatnam, here on Tuesday, the Member Secretary said there were plans to introduce bar coding, GPS and an app to ensure that the rules were being implemented properly.

Common treatment facilities have been established in all districts in Andhra Pradesh, except Kadapa and Vizianagaram.

A second treatment facility should be considered, if the bed strength was more than 10,000 in any district.

A second common treatment facility was planned in Visakhapatnam, Krishna and a few other districts, Mr. Yadav said. The APPCB Member Secretary said training programmes in biomedical waste management were started about six months ago at major hospitals in the State.

He suggested that small hospitals and healthcare institutes should form committees to handle biomedical waste with a nurse as the nodal in-charge. APPCB could coordinate with the nodal in-charge for conduct of training programmes in future.

Mr. Yadav commended DM&HO of Visakhapatnam, S. Tirupathi Rao, for mandating new hospitals to have proper biomedical waste disposal systems in place before applying for licences.