Environmentally
Responsible Home-based Healthcare
10 May 2004
In addition, to the burden
of caring for sick relatives suffering from HIV/Aids, home based care providers
are struggling to find sustainable ways to manage infectious
waste generated through caring for their ailing relatives.
Health care waste management
challenges
The absence of an infectious
health care waste management programme or guidelines at a home level is
disturbing. This is so because the waste generated poses hazards to the
people and the environment in particular natural resources such as ground
water. The general assumption is that health care waste that is generated
at home is disposed off in pit latrines. Statistics show that about 40
percent of the rural Swazi population do not have pit latrines at their
homes nor a borehole to secure water (Ministry of Economic Planning and
Development 2002). Water is even much more critical for hygiene and sanitation
especially in view of the HIV/Aids pandemic. Have you ever taken a thought
about the underprivileged? Let alone how they are coping with the challenges
of caring for their sick relatives and the health care waste generated
there from? Worse situations are where children are left to take
care of their sick parents. Children do not know or even think of safe
disposal of infectious waste.
Sanitation facilities
Absence of basic sanitation
facilities leaves people with no choice but to dispose off waste indiscriminately
thereby posing a serious threat to people’s health and degradation of the
environment. Studies done in Botswana by Motgawane in 2001 revealed
that the disposal of waste in Community Home Based Care Settings is indiscriminate.
The same situation could be true for us. Such practices expose the family
and the entire community to diseases. Municipality waste services in the
country do not seem to cater for infectious health care waste generated
under home based care.
National Solid Waste Management
Strategy
Swaziland has a National Solid
Waste Management Strategy 2003, which seeks to address waste management
problems in both urban and rural areas. In rural areas waste management
services are limited to formal institutions such as health centres. Further
It is important to note that hazardous components of household waste in
both urban and rural areas such as lead acid batteries, fluorescent tubes,
car oil and tyres are currently not addressed. Yet these may impact negatively
on people’s health and environment.
Watch this column for more
information on health care waste management.
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