Tehran hospitals use more than 630 different types of chemicals, of which 300 are non-toxic and the other half toxic and hazardous.

A failure to equip Tehran hospitals with special rooms to sort out and store medical waste, as well as lack of wastewater treatment systems, coupled with improper disposal of waste material in the cityÕs suburbs have given rise to a collection of environmental problems and increased the likelihood of disease outbreaks among the citizens.
Every day, more than 70 tons of hospital waste are collected from 313 hospitals and medical centers in the city and transferred to Kahrizak district, in southwest of Tehran, where they are buried.
A daily 70,000 tons of urban waste including toxic and non-toxic materials are produced in the 12-million-strong metropolis and buried in the huge Kahrizak landfill. The hazardous waste is covered by a layer of lime and soil to separate it from other waste materials.
Based on estimates, Tehran hospitals use more than 630 different types of chemicals, of which 300 are non-toxic and the other half toxic and hazardous.
Figures indicate that every hospital bed produces 2.71 kg of waste on a daily basis. Considering a total 30,000 hospital beds, close to 81.3 tons of garbage is produced.
In total, 25 of the 70 tons of daily hospital waste in Tehran are considered as hazardous. In 2003, 21,989 tons of hospital waste were collected from medical centers across the city.
Some 57 percent of hospitals in Tehran are state-run and 43 percent private-owned. Close to 80 percent of the state-sponsored and 82 percent of private hospitals lack wastewater treatment systems; while 95 percent of the former and 98 percent of the latter do not have special storages for keeping waste material.
So far, the judiciary has issued verdicts to seal four polluting hospitals of the capital namely Sassan, Firouzgar, Oil Company and Modarres.
Managing director of Tehran MunicipalityÕs Recycling Organization told Iran Daily, ÒUp to 40 percent of the hospital waste collected from medical centers in Tehran contain infectious material and sharp pointed pieces. Close to 60 percent are similar to household waste.Ó
Abolfazl Ebrahimi explained that hospital waste is collected in separate vehicles. ÒThe waste is buried in Aradkouh district, south of Kahrizak, in separate ditches with a depth of four meters and covered with lime and soil in two daily morning and evening shifts.Ó
He gave assurances that Kahrizak landfill is under strict control of municipal workers who will prevent any theft of garbage. ÒThe municipality recycled close to 3,000 tons of TehranÕs urban waste last year (ended March 20). All household garbage is going to be recycled as of this year, so that by the Clean Earth Day, there will be no garbage left for burial,Ó he stated.
ÒPresently, hospital garbage is being mainly buried in landfills. Negotiations have been done with the Health Ministry. A central incinerator will be established provided the costs are paid by the hospitals.Ó
The official explained that the hospitals have been informed of guidelines issued by the municipality and submitted by the City Council about the necessity of having special rooms for sorting, packing and keeping waste.
ÒNone of them have incinerators and only 20 percent of the waste is sorted out,Ó he mentioned.
ÒHospitals should separate infectious materials from those produced in their kitchens before handing them over to garbage trucks. Unfortunately, this is not presently done, which entails environmental risks and economic losses. Hospital waste is presently pressed and transferred in closed trucks. However, the garbage juice produced in this way is dangerous. In order to resolve the problem, container trucks need to be used. This, however, depends on whether the municipality would have sufficient funds to allocate for that purpose.Ó
Presently, hospitals are paying 20-30 rials per kilo to the Recycling Organization for disposal of their waste. ÒWhereas, an efficient safe system would require 1,480 rials for collecting and up to 4,000 rials for disposing every kilo of hospital waste. Based on the law, the Health Ministry is responsible for collecting and destroying hospital waste. However, the due to the ministryÕs inability to handle the task, the municipality undertook the responsibility,Ó he stated.
ÒBy sorting out toxic garbage from non-hazardous waste, the volume of hospital waste would decline to 30-40 tons from 70-80 tons a day at present. This would both facilitate and reduce the costs of destroying garbage.Ó
He said TM considers autoclave systems or a central incinerator as two options for managing hazardous waste. The property, however, goes to incineration.
ÒProviding individual hospitals with separate incinerators would be costly. Moreover, this would require every hospital to allocate some space to the purpose. A centralized incineration system would also ease environmental controls,Ó he added.

Rodents are growing larger in number in Tehran.

Deputy head of the Company to Organize Industries and Jobs of the Tehran Municipality highlighted the need to check the rapid growth in rodent population.
ÒFighting the mice without knowing their number is a futile attempt,Ó Farshad Fakhimi said.
ÒWithout getting to know the actual number of rodents, we cannot have precise estimates of the costs and efficiency of the operations. Also, the figures announced on the number of mice killed will not be accurate.Ó
As declared by TM officials, a crash program will be implemented during spring to reduce the mice population. ÒThe figures already announced are unreliable. Those are simply estimates based on the reproduction rate of rodents,Ó he asserted.
ÒUnder ideal circumstances, a pair of mice can reproduce 500 in a year, which would amount to 25 million in three years.Ó
Last summer, the TM executed an anti-rodent combat program. However, they multiplied in winter once again, because the fight had not been based on reliable statistics, he mentioned.
ÒWhat is certain is that the rodents are growing larger in number in Tehran. Eliminating the urban scourge require serious cooperation by the Department of Environment, Veterinary Organization, Agriculture Jihad Ministry and the universities.Ó

National Health Week has been slated for April 8-14 with its themes highlighted as ÔHealthy Man: Key to Sustainable DevelopmentÕ and ÔLetÕs Care for Maternal and Child Health.Õ
An advisor to Health Minister, Houshmand Sefidi, said worldwide, approximately 600,000 women die annually from pregnancy and childbirth related conditions. Also more than 10 million children die each year in the developing world, the vast majority from causes preventable through a combination of good care, nutrition, and medical treatment.
Sefidi explained that 70 percent of total maternal deaths are caused by five important factors namely bleeding, infections, unsafe abortions, hypertension and delivery complications.
The expert gave assurances that promoting awareness and health of women can reduce the toll, adding Iran had recorded good success in declining maternal and child mortality rate over the recent years.
ÒDeath toll among under-five Iranian kids has declined from 135 per 1,000 live births in 1972 to 26 per 1,000 lives birth in 2004,Ó he mentioned.
ÒAlso the maternal death toll has declined from 90 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 37 per 100,000 live births in 2004.Ó

Plans for bringing back TehranÕs abandoned cemeteries into use will be finalized by the end of spring, deputy Tehran mayor for urban services said.
Mohammad Javad Mohammadi-Zadeh noted that based on the scheme, all abandoned cemeteries in Tehran will be cleansed to prepare them for future burials.
He noted that Tehran has many abandoned cemeteries using which will help meet part of the need for burial space.
ÒTehranÕs Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery will only have sufficient space for burial within the next three years,Ó Mohammadi-Zadeh added. ÒA 160-hectare expansion project is being implemented at the graveyard. Once complete, it would meet demand for another 15 years.Ó
Tehran Municipality is going to construct two new burial grounds in east and west of the capital. ÒFeasibility studies are already over and we hope that the executive phase shall start shortly,Ó he mentioned.

An old man and his cow in Alamout, Qazvin province. (Photo by Oshin D. Zakarian)

Using computers to prescribe drugs has helped doctors curb dangerous errors caused by messy handwriting and bureaucratic mishaps, but the technology can
create its share of mistakes, a study said, Reuters reported.
In some cases, fragmented computer displays result in prescription errors, or drug inventory information from the pharmacy has been mistaken for dosage guidelines.
In other cases, doctors' orders to renew a drug were placed on paper charts but not on the computer system, drugs were incorrectly ordered more than once, incompatible drugs were ordered simultaneously, or the computer system's inflexibility generated its own mistakes.
"The literature on (Computer Physician Order Entry systems), with few exceptions, is enthusiastic. Our findings, however, reveal that CPOE systems can facilitate error risks in addition to reducing them," wrote chief study author Ross Koppel of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia.
Noting that 770,000 US patients are killed or injured annually by so-called adverse drug events, the report said previous research had shown computer entry systems had sharply reduced medication errors. But it concluded the technology
needed constant attention and continuous revisions.
"This limitation is especially noteworthy because many problems we identified are easily corrected," he wrote in a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Koppel and his colleagues interviewed a 261-person hospital staff using a computer ordering system, discovering 22 types of medication errors that were experienced by three-quarters of those surveyed.
An accompanying editorial in the same journal said the findings were disappointing but not surprising.

If Europe wants to fight the problem of ageing populations, it must introduce family-friendly policies that encourage people to have more children, Reuters quoted the European Commission as saying in a report.
The European Union's executive has drafted proposals to revive Europe's stagnating economy, but even if growth starts picking up across the bloc, the EU could still face economic problems in the future unless demographic trends are reversed.
"Ageing could cause potential annual growth in GNP (gross national product) in Europe to fall from 2 to 2.25 percent today to 1.25 percent in 2040, with all that entails for entrepreneurship and initiative in our societies," the
commission said in the report on demographic changes in Europe.
With the fertility rate declining, the working population of the 25-nation EU is set to fall by 20.8 million people between 2005 and 2030, it said.
ÒThe fertility rate everywhere is below the threshold needed to renew the population (around 2.1 children per woman) and has even fallen below 1.5 children per woman in many member states."
The commission said Europe should provide more incentives to have children, such as childcare, leave for both parents and high family benefits.
Equal pay for men and women and ensuring women could have children without losing jobs or ruining careers would also encourage people to procreate, it said.
"If Europe is to reverse this decline (in fertility rates), families must be further encouraged by public policies that will allow women and men to reconcile family life and work," the report said.
EU Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said some European states already have policies in place which could have a positive impact on the birth rate.
"France and Sweden have very targeted policies on family and emancipation--low taxes for families, high child allowances, swift re-entry of women into the labor market after maternity, unbureaucratic access to parental leave and a widespread network of high quality childcare facilities," Spidla told Reuters.
"These policies are successful. But politics alone is not sufficient. They have to go hand in hand with a picture of society that does not denounce mothers who re-enter the labor market and does not declare fathers who take care of children as weird."

Belarus has imposed tougher regulations on citizens wanting to work or study abroad in order to reduce people trafficking, a senior official in President
Alexander Lukashenko's administration said, Reuters reported.
A decree signed by Lukashenko, accused by the West of rigging elections, stifling independent media and cracking down on opponents, means students and potential workers must first seek permission from government ministries before traveling. The new regulations will also impose restrictions on marriage and adoption agencies.
"The state plans to be tough on marriage agencies which have become a source of people trafficking," Natalia Petkevich, deputy head of Lukashenko's administration, told a news conference.
"There are many cases when a woman goes abroad in response to a matrimonial ad to found a family and ends up as a housekeeper, cleaning and cooking for two-three months. Then she is told she isn't good enough and all but gets thrown into the street."
Lukashenko, a Soviet-era farm boss in power since 1994, upholds what he describes as wholesome conservative values and denounces Western advertising and consumerism. Criticism of his policies has plunged Belarus into increasing isolation.
The Belarussian economy is run along communist-era lines with the government controlling prices and ordering companies what to produce and what salaries to pay.
Official figures showed up to 6,000 people leave Belarus every year to work abroad and thousand more go to study.
Non-governmental organizations put the figure of those working abroad at 15,000 a year.
Petkevich said authorities wanted order in foreign adoptions. "Nobody can guarantee that when a child is adopted internationally he is really getting into a new family rather than being used for some other purpose," she said.
"The decree sets personal responsibility for the adoption, in this case by the education minister."
Official figures showed that about 2,000 Belarussian children were adopted by foreigners in the last two years.
She said Belarus would take preventive measures to fight people trafficking by creating jobs for young people. The country will develop modeling and the entertainment business, boosting advertising markets and holding more beauty contests.