Kathmandu, June 25 -- Seti Maya Chamini, a sanitation worker at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City, cleaned the city roads for four decades.

Months before her retirement, during her usual morning shift, she got her fingers pricked by a needle while collecting waste. As the burning sensation grew, she went to a hospital. Doctors at the hospital informed her that two of her fingers had developed an infection and that they needed to be amputated if they were to save her hand.

Doctors believed the infection was from a used syringe, one of the hazardous hospital wastes.

There are around 900 workers in the department. Like Chamini, several other staff working at the environmental department of the metropolitan city, have been infected by hazard...