Healthcare Waste Report - Environment Health

Guidelines for appropriate healthcare
waste management are available in
many forms and shapes and with the
dawn of an information world it is
not difficult to access them. In fact,
formulating or finding guidelines
for healthcare waste management is
straightforward and not demanding
at all. Workable strategies for
realizing the guidelines in action are
rather imperative.
Expel conventional intuitions of
healthcare waste and impel fresh
insights into minds of all
concerned.
Healthcare waste management
has been dialogued on a multitude
of events in the last two decades.
However, what have been mostly
discussed are the technological
issues in handling healthcare
waste, treatment methods,
secondary pollution problems
and implementation of waste
management plans. The following
sections of this Chapter do not
declare them redundant, but
endeavors to supplement them
with vibrant thoughts and dynamic
perspectives to meet the changing
priorities of the countries.
POINTS TO PONDER
Problem of Management not
Technology
Healthcare waste has been mostly looked
upon as technological issue and any debate on
it begins with the accessibility or soundness of
relevant technologies. Time and again, hi-tech
incinerators are perceived to be the one-stop
solution for disposing healthcare waste,
regardless of what the constituents are.
Environmentalists and pressure groups across
the world have been raising hues and cries on
the ramifications of incineration. It is vital to
understand that incineration cannot singlehandedly
solve healthcare waste disposal
issues. It is only the last link at the end of the
healthcare waste chain, but with many other
management measures before that.
Healthcare waste has to be seen as contiguous
blocks of individual actions requiring
appropriate management strategies to control
it. Every block consists of specific tasks such as
segregation at source, proper collection, safe
storage, systematic transportation and sound
disposal. It is essential to look through the
composition of the waste and then select
appropriate management strategies, first to
avoid its generation, second to reduce the
amount generated and thirdly to find a
treatment method, barring incineration.
The primary step in healthcare waste disposal
should be to evolve a management plan for
the different components of the waste stream.
Getting entrapped into complicated
technologies requiring huge capital
investments to dispose, what is called, waste
would only result in throwing valuable
resources down the drain.
125 HEALTHCARE WASTE IN ASIA: INTUITIONS & INSIGHTS