By Godfred Aaneamenga Polkuu
Bolgatanga, Aug. 4, GNA – Mr Richard Assam, a Public Health Nurse at the Sandema Hospital in the Builsa North Municipality, has called on managements of healthcare facilities to prioritise proper waste disposal and good sanitation practices to enhance public health and safety.
He said the improper segregation and disposal of hospital waste was a major problem in some healthcare facilities in the country, as such acts posed danger to public health and safety.
“It is a problem that has plagued the Ghana Health Service (GHS) for some time now”, he said.
He observed that some healthcare facilities do not have incinerators, noting that incinerators were key components in healthcare waste management, and that without them, hospital waste were improperly disposed.
Mr Assam, an award-winning Senior Nursing Officer (SNO), was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in interview to draw attention of stakeholders to the critical need for and importance of proper hospital waste and sanitation management across the country.
The SNO, who has interest in infection prevention and control, and healthcare waste segregation, noted that: “The way we manage our waste in various hospitals and other healthcare facilities is not the best.”
According to him, about 70 to 85 per cent of the waste generated in healthcare facilities were non-hazardous or domestic waste, which do not contain infections, while the remaining 15 per cent was infectious waste.
He said owing to the non-adherence to standard protocols in healthcare waste management, both hazardous and non-hazardous waste were mixed up.
“That was why when COVID-19 struck, it was able to ravage like it did, because hitherto, waste that were not termed infectious, became infectious because if a COVID-19 infected person used a tissue paper to clean the hands or sneezed on, the tissue paper harboured the infection,” he explained.
Mr Assam noted that per the GHS protocol with respect to healthcare waste management, health facilities were supposed to have four-colour-coded waste bins namely; black, red, brown and yellow.
He said waste were supposed to be segregated into each designated bin, and said the black bin was for general waste, such as papers, the red bins for contaminated plastic waste such as syringes without needles, catheters among others, brown for pharmaceutical waste and the yellow bin for highly infectious waste contaminated with blood and other body fluids.
Mr Assam said: “When you visit some of our hospitals, these are not there. Where they even try to segregate the waste, in the end, the waste collectors lump all of them together, move them to the external storage and take to the final disposal site.
“This exposes the community to the remnants of the infectious agents because we have people who scavenge on this waste. They go to the final disposal sites and are exposed to dangers. It is a course of worry.”
The Public Health Nurse further expressed concern about unhygienic nature of lavatories in public healthcare facilities and insisted that such places must be clean to maintain clients and patients’ dignity, and prevent hospital acquired infections.
Mr Assam noted that even though there were fantastic waste management policies by the Ministry of Health, the implementation by the GHS, was a challenge, and, therefore, urged management of the Service to pay critical attention to proper waste and sanitation management in the country.
GNA
Edited by Caesar Abagali/Benjamin Mensah