By Kingsley Adegboye

Arising from the just concluded National Healthcare Waste Summit in Abuja, participants at  the summit have called for urgent adoption of the Draft National Policy and Strategic Plan on healthcare waste management and development of appropriate legislative/regulatory frameworks for sound healthcare waste management in the country.

In a communique issued at the end of the two-day summit, participants also called for the establishment of national inventory on healthcare waste management to support evidence-based interventional scheme implementation and promotion as well as strengthening of Public Private Partnership, PPP, as an innovative approach to attracting  direct investments in the healthcare waste management sector.

The communique urged other states of the federation to emulate the good practices of Lagos State in healthcare waste management by internalizing interventional healthcare waste management programme implementation, while calling on Federal and State Ministries of Environment and Health to support healthcare waste management training programmes for regulatory officers, healthcare facility workers and waste handlers.

The summit called for mainstreaming community-based organisations, CBO, to be involved in advocacy on dangers of inappropriate healthcare waste management to enable communities overcome denial of healthcare waste burdens of diseases. It also urged both Federal and State Ministries of Environment and Health to develop predictable and sustainable funding mechanism for healthcare waste management programmes.

Calling for a healthcare waste management summit to be organised in the six geopolitical zones of the federation to stimulate participation by states and other relevant healthcare waste management sectoral players in collective decision making process, participants urged the Federal Government to play a lead role in the assessment of BAT/BEP approaches for healthcare waste management; facilitating information sharing and attracting necessary capacity and infrastructure support to states.

According to the document, private sector participants, PSPs, should ensure good health and safety of waste handlers by providing them with necessary PPEs and enforcing their use, pointing out that the government should integrate sound healthcare waste management into national school curricula to promote information and knowledge sharing in the society.

The summit had earlier observed that a National Policy on Healthcare Waste Management is the bedrock for successful implementation and enforcement of a sound healthcare waste management system in Nigeria, just as it commended the efforts of the Federal Ministry of Environment in providing incinerating facilities to tertiary health institutions, to boost their healthcare waste management  capacities.

The participants also observed that the efforts of the Lagos State Government in piloting a waste management programme targeted at healthcare and medical waste BAT/BEP approaches that can be replicated by other states, stressing that improper healthcare waste management impacts significantly on the well-being of individuals and socio-economic activities in the community.

They observed that there is dearth of national legislative framework on waste management in Nigeria and delay in finalizing the adoption of the draft National Healthcare Waste Management Policy and Strategic Plan. They added that the rising public concern over unsound practices in healthcare waste management such as unprotected handling by healthcare workers, co-disposal and open burning will result in grave environmental and  health hazards.