The Regional workshop for Safe Management of Healthcare Wastes

Venue: Sonesta Pharaoh Beach Resort

Address: Qesm Hurghada, Red Sea

Background:  Shed the light on the problems of the health care wastes in Arab States and the importance of the environmentally sound management of these wastes. Present an overview about the international sustainable wastes management policies, principles and best practice guidance for sustainable medical waste management.  Define the difficulties the Arab states may face through the process of medical wastes management. Elaborate discussions about the best Waste management planning

Working Language: English only

Organizer: BCRC-Egypt with the assistance of SBC

Meeting Objectives:  The workshop objective was to present an overview about the international sustainable wastes management policies, principles and best practice guidance for sustainable medical waste management, to define the difficulties the Arab states may face through the process of medical wastes management and to elaborate discussions about the best Waste management planning.

Target Audience:  The Arab states national technical officials, who are responsible for or involved in the Safe Health Care Waste Management in the respective countries. The workshop was attended by 24 participants from 13 Arab countries including Kingdom of Bahrain, Republic of Djibouti, Arab Republic of Egypt, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, State of Kuwait, Lebanese Republic, Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Kingdom of Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Republic of the Sudan, Tunisian Republic, and Yemeni Republic. Among the 24 participants, 8 females participated in the workshop

Outcome: The workshop demonstrated that public awareness on health care waste management needs to be increased. Countries may benefit from coordinated campaigns, including sharing information and other public awareness materials.  All countries welcome a regional approach for exchanging any harmonized process for future avoidance of health care waste and, countries expressed concern about medical devices donated from international organizations and donors, where countries do not have the capacity to manage them when they became waste. Finally, countries expressed the need for training of local health directorates at the level of governorates/or states in the environmentally sound management of healthcare waste.

Recommendations

• BCRC-Egypt should adopt an initiative to review the environmental decisions concerned with the management of medical waste in the Arab countries, for assessment and evaluation to make it more integrated.
• BCRC-Egypt should issue brochures and educational fliers to help staff involved in the separation of medical waste generated from their sources.
• BCRC-Egypt should prepare a consolidated reference guide to be applied in all the Arab countries and submit an annual report to the center steering committee to determine the level of achievements and difficulties to be shared with the rest of the Arab states.
• Unifying definitions of medical waste, hazardous waste and waste management.
• BCRC-Egypt should enhance the establishment of environmental courts and study the feasibility of organizing trainings for these courts officials to update them with the environmental concepts
• Approval of the principle that polluters should pay for their action while leaving each state to develop an implementation mechanism according to its national law.
• Agreement to develop an integrated strategy for the Arab nations to manage medical waste.
• Adoption and initiation of strategic national plan for medical waste management to implement Best Environmental Practice (BEP).
• Supply of treatment facilities for medical waste (incinerators and autoclaves, sterilizers,….etc ).
• Serious commitment of policy makers and high executive staff to the importance and necessity of medical waste issue.
• Secure of sufficient budget for medical waste management.
• Capacity building for health – care staff.
• Awareness raising.
• Improvement of legislations and enforcement of the law.
• Employment of competent technical staff in the field of operation and maintenance of medical waste treatment devices.
• Initiation of information system and data collection personnel.
• Rally of the international organizations support.

 Conclusive Remarks