Healthcare Waste Report - Environment Health

Contribution of WHO
World Health Organization (WHO), being the
most authentic and appropriate source of
information on healthcare waste, significantly
served as a guideline during this report
preparation. It helped in clearly understanding
the terms related to healthcare waste. In
addition, the complexity that arose while
addressing the status under same grounds due
to the lack of commonality usage of terms in
different countries were made simple from the
understanding gained from WHO information.
Thus, the information exclusively aided in
sustaining consistency throughout this report.
Review Process
Corresponding reports of each country were
sent for review to the country representatives.
The review comments provided by them in
return were incorporated and updated
accordingly. The finalized reports after the
review were then compiled and evaluated for
consistency throughout for easy assessment
and comparison of the status among the
regions in similar grounds.
STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT
Country Reports
The reports have been designed to first
provide an overview of the country following
which a profile of the healthcare facilities in
the country is provided. The succeeding
section of the country report discusses the
healthcare waste scenario and management in
the facilities. The subsequent section presents
current institutional set up and its contribution
to the HCWM and the prevailing policies,
regulations and legislations. The next section
includes multilateral and international
organization involvement in HCWM.
CHAPTER 2_METHODOLOGY
Global Experiences and Lessons to
Learn
Healthcare waste management is subject
matter of knowing what it is and how to
handle it. With this understanding a dedicated
Chapter on Global Experiences and Lessons
to Learn has been provided. This
Chapter provides information on methods of
healthcare waste management across the
world, both from European and other Asian
countries. Experiences from good and bad
practices on healthcare waste and its
management has been provided only as an
eye-opener and not with the intention of
demeaning the corresponding country.
The Chapter provides light on some nondestructive
technologies for healthcare waste
management. This section is provided with
the idea of bringing to limelight the various
non-burn technologies available and clearing
the minds that incineration is the only option
for managing and disposing healthcare waste.
Recommendations
In a study of such scale, involving 12
countries, placing country specific
recommendations is beyond practicality as it
has to take into account the regional variations
and socio-economic disparities. With this idea,
the recommendations of this report are
inclined towards turning the eyes from looking
healthcare waste as a management problem
than a technological one. With this
perspective, the Chapter places
recommendations on some vibrant outlooks
for healthcare waste management.
Overall, this report is supposed to be a first of
its kind in that it addresses healthcare waste in
a regional perspective. No such study involving
healthcare waste in 12 countries, with a
regional perspective has been ever reported.
The contents of the report and its
recommendations are expected to make a
paradigm shift towards improved healthcare
waste management in the region.
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