Mansoor Khan and his wife Latifa Bibi have been collecting scraps of plastic and other items at an enormous landfill site in the Indian capital for nearly 20 years.
The $5 they earn a day allow their 3 children to go to school, for a longer term longer than the livelihood their parents have been able to earn.
But over the past few months, increasing amounts of biomedical waste have been arriving at the dump – a result, experts say, of the novel coronavirus pandemic and a huge risk for those who work there.
Spread over 21 hectares (52 acres) and emerging over 60 meters (197 feet), the site is filled with used coronavirus control kits, protective appliances and blood- and pus-stained medical bandages, among tons of service waste throughout the city, adding small hospitals and retirement homes.
Hundreds of scavengers, who add children, seek waste with their bare hands, are exposed to a disease that has inflamed 16 million international people and killed more than 600,000 people.
India reported about 1.4 million instances in total, only the United States and Brazil.
Khan, 44, is one of the risks, but he feels he has no choice.
“What if we die? What if we spread this disease? But the concern will fill our stomachs, so we have to do this job,” reuters told the news agency, standing in front of its two-room space at the foot of a mountain of garbage.
Bibi, 38, feared returning the infection to the couple’s children, aged 16, 14 and 11.
“When I get back from there, I’m afraid to move from home because I have young people at home. We’re afraid of this disease,” he said.
Dinesh Raj Bandela, a biomedical waste expert at the New Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, said there are transparent protocols established through the national pollutant regulator for biomedical waste.
But they are not monitored during the epidemic, he said, exposing landfillers to the threat of coronavirus and other diseases ranging from hepatitis to HIV.
Neither the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, which manages the landfill, nor india’s Central Pollution Control Board responded to requests for comment.
According to Bandela, the Indian capital used to produce about six hundred tons of medical waste consistent with the day, however, this has increased by more than a hundred since the virus occurred.