CHENNAI: In 2014, 16 patients at the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital were infected with Hepatitis C virus due to alleged reuse of contaminated dialyser and blood tubings. Two years down the line, Chennai hospitals have still not learnt the importance of proper sterilisation.
Documents submitted in the National Green Tribunal by BJ Expo Pvt Ltd, the city’s only authorised laundry for hospital linen, show that only about 10 hospitals in the city are supplying linen to them for washing. This means most of the hospitals in city are giving their linen, to unauthorised laundries. Some end up in places like Chetpet dhobi khana, Chennai’s oldest with nearly 1000 washermen.
When Express visited the Chetpet dhobi khana, linen with labels of some of the prominent city hospitals - even those with the coveted Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation - were being washed by the dhobis along with other clothes. The risks of doing this are many.
Besides the infections from the hospital linen spreading to other clothes washed in the dhobi khana, the patients in these first-class private hospitals too face hygiene risks when the linen are reused. While a few hospitals directly give the linen to the dhobis, most of the others come from big players in the industry, the dhobis said. For example, an unauthorised launder having mechanised facility in Red Hills, takes bulk orders from a leading private hospital and sends it to Chetpet dhobi khana. The economics is simple: While the private launderer charges `12 per bed sheet, he pays the dhobi just `7, netting a 40 per cent profit doing nothing.