POST 00675E : WASTE MANAGEMENT EVALUATION

POST 00675E : WASTE MANAGEMENT EVALUATION Follow-up on Post 00665E 18 May 2004 _______________________________ Samuel Kamau (mailto:[email protected]) from Kenya comments and makes suggestions on waste management system evaluation. ___________________________ Dear Dr.Dial I read your e-mail and I felt of commenting or suggesting one or two things as you ponder on how you are going to do the evaluation. We should appreciate that most EPI in developing countries have realized the importance of sorting a problem they created after 20 years of EPI maturity. We are still making the same mistake of talking of EPI related wastes instead of talking of total hospital wastes management in totality. We have been training health workers on how to integrate EPI service into Primary Health Care and we can not again just talk of sharps wastes due to immunizations alone. I have witnessed this in our EPI here in Kenya where we put up some De Montfort Incinerators and no consideration was given to the other wastes. As you plan for your evaluation I suggest you plan for a comprehensive and integrated evaluation where all sections within the hospital generate the sharps and non-sharps wastes are included. Also how much workload and how much of each category of wastes is generated per day in terms of composition and quantity. The reason is that once you put up an incinerator the health workers know that it is for all wastes but not for a particular programme of which again it will be against the on going health reform. All departments and as many health workers should be involved. The issue of wastes management is not being given the much attention it deserves and in most health institutions there is no management structure on who is responsible on the day to day issuance of wastes collection receptacles, frequency of collection, handling care and the final delivery to the disposal point. This is a challenge to all of us S.M KAMAU National Logistician EPI KENYA ______________________________________________________________________________ Visit the TECHNET21 Website at http://www.technet21.org You will find instructions to subscribe, a direct access to archives, links to reference documents and other features. ______________________________________________________________________________ To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to : mailto:[email protected] Leave the subject area BLANK In the message body, write unsubscribe TECHNET21E ______________________________________________________________________________ The World Health Organization and UNICEF support TechNet21. The TechNet21 e-Forum is a communication/information tool for generation of ideas on how to improve immunization services. It is moderated by Claude Letarte and is hosted in cooperation with the Centre de coopération internationale en santé et développement, Québec, Canada (http://www.ccisd.org) ______________________________________________________________________________