The world is slowly crawling out of the pandemic, but the piles of masks, gloves and other disposables which were used in the war against Covid-19 are going to pose a health hazard unless disposed carefully.
According to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO), tens of thousands of tonnes of extra medical waste from the response to the Covid-19 pandemic has put tremendous pressure on healthcare waste management systems around the world, threatening human and environmental health and exposing a dire need to improve waste management practices.
According to the WHO analysis, some 87,000 tonnes of personal protective equipment (PPE) procured between March 2020 and November 2021 and shipped to support urgent Covid-19 response needs through a joint UN emergency initiative are expected to have been converted into waste.
“However, this number does not take into account any of the Covid-19 commodities procured outside of the initiative, nor waste generated by the public like disposable medical masks,’’, said Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme.
The statistics revealed are indeed shocking. More than 140 million test kits, with a potential to generate 2,600 tonnes of non-infectious waste (mainly plastic) and 731,000 litres of chemical waste, which is equivalent to one-third of an Olympic-size swimming pool, have been shipped, while over 8 billion doses of vaccine have been administered globally producing 143 tonnes of additional waste in the form of syringes, needles and safety boxes.
“It is vital to provide health workers with the right PPE. But it is also vital to ensure that it can be used safely without impacting on the surrounding environment’’, he added. The WHO study has found that today, 30 per cent of healthcare facilities worldwide, with 60 per cent in the least developed countries, are not equipped to handle existing waste loads, let alone the additional Covid-19 load. This potentially exposes health workers to needle stick injuries, burns and pathogenic microorganisms while also impacting communities living near poorly managed landfills and waste disposal sites through contaminated air from burning waste, poor water quality or disease-carrying pests.
However, according to reports, the Sultanate of Oman has an effective waste management system, and Covid-19 waste has not been in the limelight, at least for the time being.
“Generally, medical waste disposal is well regulated in the Sultanate of Oman by the Ministry of Health (MoH). We have outsourced it and different types of contaminated waste materials are segregated from the beginning and collected in different types of containers and collected by the disposal service’’, says Dr Benny Panakkal, a senior cardiologist.
As various countries panicked with the task of securing and quality-assuring supplies of PPE, less attention and resources were devoted to the safe and sustainable management of Covid-19 related healthcare waste, indicating that having effective management systems and awareness campaigns for health workers on what to do with PPE and health commodities after they have been used became all the more important.
“As far as I know, all hospitals have a MoH authorised vendor for disposal of Covid-19 waste and internally also we follow the ministry guidelines of collection, storage and disposal of covid waste,’’, said Dr Dilip Singhvi.
Experts in medical equipment from the Sultanate of Oman suggested many ways to address the medical waste issue. Accordingly, using eco-friendly packaging and shipping, safe and reusable PPE such as gloves and medical masks, recyclable or biodegradable materials and investment in non-burn waste treatment technologies, such as autoclaves, can help reduce the risk to the environment.
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