VOA常速英语:医疗废弃物遍布巴基斯坦海岸

Former Pakistan national cricket team captain Wasim Akram’s wife Shanira Akram tweeted a video of open used syringes and hospital waste on the beach. The video went viral on Twitter in Pakistan, prompting Karachi city administrators to clean things up.
Dr. Zafar Iqbal, a professor at the Institute of Environmental Studies, says medical waste that’s not disposed of properly can be life-threatening. Hospital waste is very dangerous. They carry syringes and the blood swabs, very infectious and you get diseases very easily. There are proper disposal and incineration methods for a reason. Sewage, wastewater and plastic are also disposed in the ocean on a daily basis. World Wildlife Fund for Nature or WWF technical advisor in Pakistan Mauzam Khan says plastic pollution has forced the closure of some beaches. Visitors carelessly throwing their plastic bags or chips bags. There’s a small contribution. But when you see four to five thousand tons of garbage unaccounted for, this is what you get. At the beach, there is a small but growing understanding that pollution is everyone’s problem. Our people are uneducated, where they eat, they toss their trash anywhere. You can put hundreds of boxes, but to educate them about this, a lot has to be done.

 Local environmental activists say education alone won’t solve the problem. The country needs a reliable system of waste disposal that keeps the garbage in landfills and off the beaches.