Every person working in the hospital setting is impacted by the healthcare waste management –besides every person must be provided with right training and knowledge on how the gestión de residuos sanitarios and disposal procedures directly impacts the infection control.
As a global healthcare system expands, to reach more people & offering more sophisticated treatments, the silent and neglected crisis will be unfolding. The growing amount of the waste generated by the lifesaving advances isn’t getting treated rightly, causing huge suffering, unnecessary carbon emission, pollution, and waste of the resources.
What’s Importance of the Healthcare Waste Management?
The healthcare waste management generally refers to the waste generated from the healthcare facilities, laboratories, hospitals, and various other diagnostic facilities. The healthcare institutions play a very important role to protect health and waste generated and must be accounted for rightly. Of waste generated, around 85% are totally non-hazardous whereas 15% are toxic, infectious, and radioactive.
Worldwide, around 16 billion injections get administered but all of these syringes & needles weren’t disposed properly. Right management of the health care waste becomes important as the infectious material in wastes will infect health care workers, hospital staff and patients. Incineration of the healthcare waste in improper way and will result in creating dioxins, furans or other pollutants.
Considered as one important issue hospital waste management must be given right training in the waste segregation; important is management of the hazardous waste. Are your staffs confident in difference between varieties of the healthcare waste streams that you generate? It means:
- Sharps waste
- Biohazard waste
- Chemotherapy waste
Storage of the Biomedical Waste:
The healthcare facilities should make available storage area for the medical waste till it gets collected for the treatment or clearance. The storage area must be carefully designated that is remote to general public and should display cautionary symbols and signs. It must get deposited in the secured and dry area before getting transported. Area should be sheltered from wind, water, insects, rodents, and animals. Any harmful biomedical waste must not get stored for over 3 months.
The best part is solutions exist that will address such problems, and, popularize and develop right technologies, concepts and products that can help to drive our society forward to zero waste, toxics free, low carbon, and circular economy.
By segregating and reducing health care waste, healthcare facilities will be able to reduce the operational costs, get rid of any risks to the staff, and improve local environment and community relations.
