Chandigarh, August 4
Surgical gloves are changing hands for the purpose of recycling.

Discarded by hospitals, dispensaries and even nursing homes in the region, some of these are reportedly finding their way back to healthcare institutes in Punjab and other places. If patients turn into victims in the process, nobody is apparently bothered about it.

A survey of the junk markets in Chandigarh and neighbouring villages reveals “operation recycle” to be an organised activity. The gloves are picked up by scavengers from outside the healthcare institutes before being sold to junk dealers in and around the city.

From there, these are purchased for a paltry sum of Rs 5 per kg by “unscrupulous agents” for onward transmission to the “manufacturers” involved in the process of recycling the gloves.

In fact, the used gloves — some of these stained with dry blood — are packed in sacks before being loaded in mini-trucks for the national Capital and other cities.

Almost all junk dealers involved in the activity are ignorant of the fact that they, along with the patients, are also exposing themselves to health hazards by handling the disposed of gloves with bare hands.

Refusing flatly to listen to your logic, the dealers insist there is nothing to worry about. “We have been doing this for years” — their argument is simple, yet forceful.

Though they claim that the gloves are melted and moulded into toys and other plastic goods, including dustbins and dustpans, their recycling after washing and drying is an open secret.

Only recently, PCMS Association members discovered that “sterile disposable surgical gloves” supplied to various hospitals in the state were certainly not of standard quality.

Giving details, the association president, Dr Hardeep Singh, says “a pair of gloves taken from a sealed pouch were neither of the same colour, nor of the same texture”, raising suspicion. Moreover, the size mentioned on the pouch was different from the one specified on the glove.

Elaborating on the perilous implications of using recycled gloves, Dr Hardeep Singh says: “It can result in serious infection to a patient already suffering from one problem or the other. In cases, infection can also be fatal. Besides, the ragpickers handling plastic syringes, needles and even gloves can find themselves infected with hepatitis-B, and even HIV”.