Four out of the five patients admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) after an exposure to radioactive waste at the Mayapuri scrap market in west Delhi have shown improvement.

Though the blood platelet count of all five remains low, except 35-year-old Rajinder, the rest are showing improvement, the AIIMS said in a statement on Tuesday.

The patients were referred to AIIMS on the night of April 9 from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Hospital in Hari Nagar after they were admitted with burn injuries and rashes on their bodies. The victims were continuously exposure to radiation as they had slept at the shop where radioactive material, suspected to be from a city hospital, was kept.

The victims - Ram Kalap (33), Gaurav (19), Himanshu Jain (20), Ramji Yadav (28) and Rajinder - are being closely monitored by a team of doctors from the department of medicine, medical oncology, radiological oncology and Hematology at AIIMS. They are in the isolated sterile wing of the medical ward and their immunity has dropped because of which they are under high risk of catching infection.

The scrap dealer, Deepak Jain, however, is admitted at the Indraprastha Apollo hospital for treatment. An official release by the hospital had said on Friday that Jain’s bone marrow is significantly suppressed and that his condition continues to be serious.

The blood samples of all patients have been collected and sent to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to check the level of radiation exposure to individual patient.

Continuous exposure to Cobalt-60, the radioactive material which is also used in radiotherapy to treat cancer patients, has caused the reaction on the victims.

This mishap at the local scrap market has also brought out the fact that there is no authority in the city to check the use and disposal of radioactive materials.

Meanwhile, AIIMS medical superintendent Dr DK Sharma said that the hospital strictly adheres by the rules laid down under the Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1998.

“Under the rules, the hospital waste is segregated under various categories and put in different-coloured container bins and disposed accordingly,” he said.

These rules, however, do not include radioactive waste management.
Sharma added that AIIMS has an in-house medical waste treatment plant with a total capacity of 4,000 kg.

“For treating infectious waste, our capacity is 1,000 kg. We have twin-charger incinerator which can treat 230 kg in an hour. This is enough for the in-house waste produced in the hospital,” he said.