‘People on the front line are facing serious issues’: biomedical waste and Covid-19

A much-neglected fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the explosive rise in biomedical waste – masks, personal protective equipment and now syringes and vaccine ampoules. Almost every country has strong laws on how such dangerous waste should be dealt with. But many developing countries have been so overwhelmed by the pandemic that they have failed to adequately implement these laws, posing risks both to workers on the front line of waste management and to the environment.

The result is what you see in this video report prepared by three postgraduate students of the AJK Mass Communications Research Centre at the New Delhi-based Jamia Millia Islamia University. While this report looks at the problem in the Indian capital, this issue affects many cities across the developing world.