Bio-safety stressed in hospitals, labs in Bangladesh in the wake of new diseases

Bangladesh’s medical laboratories and hospitals have been urged to focus on bio-safety, given the emergence of new diseases.

“If Bangladesh is safe, then the world is safe as well,” Petrus Paolo Carbonell, President of the ESCO Biosafety Institute, Singapore, said at a seminar on Wednesday.
 
The US-based ESCO is a leading provider of laboratory bio-safety solutions in the world.
 
Carbonell was delivering the keynote paper at the Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Dhaka.
 
Its new ‘biomedical engineering’ department has organised the seminar to make students aware of the critical need of bio-safety, particularly in laboratories and hospitals.
 
Maj Gen Dr HR Harun, consultant surgeon general of the Bangladesh Armed Forces, said bio-safety was not a new issue, but “we are looking at it from a different point of view”.
 
He said many patients contract new infections while undergoing treatment in hospitals.
 
“When they are in the ICU, they are 20 percent more likely to get hospital-acquired infections,” he said. “This can prolong hospital stay by 2.5 times.”
 
Bangladesh does not yet have any study on such infections.
 
But Harun said, in the US, “two million people get hospital-acquired infections, of them 100,000 die. It leads to an additional cost of $11 billion.”
 
“This reflects the gravity of the issue,” he said.
 
Health Secretary Syed Monjurul Islam, the seminar’s chief guest, said that it was “critical” to maintain bio-safety because of the emergence of new diseases.
 
He cited examples of the Middle-East corona virus, ebola outbreaks in some African countries, and nipah infections in Bangladesh.
 
Healthcare providers ran the maximum risk of being affected while treating such patients, he said, stressing the importance of bio-safety to create a barrier between the patients and caregivers.
 
“We must all be partners in this effort,” ESCO Institute’s President said, stressing that one institute or country cannot fight off the challenges alone in the current age of globalisation when diseases are spreading faster than before.
 
He said the fundamental objective of bio-safety is to reduce contamination.
 
“Even the design of the (hospital or lab) facility and its construction can play an important role in protecting people outside the lab and the environment,” he said.
 
“A lab must have a manual of bio-safety manual and sufficient personal protective gears (PPE) for its workers,” he said.
 
He also highlighted the need of accreditation and certifications of the laboratories to ensure fail-safe bio-safety.
 
Maj Gen Md Siddiqur Rahman Sarker, commandant of the MIST, was present, among others, at the seminar.