The Regional Director for Ghana Health Service at Damongo in the Savannah Region, Dr. Chrysantus Kubio has praised the collaboration between Zoomlion Medical Waste and Public Health Department of the Ministry of Health, School of Hygiene and School of Public Health, Korle-bu, to properly manage the Covid-19 vaccination waste across the Savannah Region and the entire nation.
“So far, the exercise is going on very well and we are praying for a successful exercise and we want to ensure that the COVID-19 vaccination waste is properly managed”.
The Zoomlion’s intervention he averred, is a good initiative saying, they have medical waste in other facilities not just related to COVID-19.
“But we just pray and hope that this kind gesture would be extended to help manage medical waste in our region. We are most grateful with the support and we pray for continuous collaboration so that we would be able to handle medical waste in the Savannah Region”.
The Zoomlion Zonal Manager for Savannah Region, Mr. Kojo Njabore on his part disclosed that, the role of Zoomlion Medical Waste is to take care of the COVID-19 vaccination waste for proper treatment and disposal.
The virus he indicated, is very dangerous and has had serious devastating effects in Ghana and the world at large. “And so, we are not leaving anything by chance and we want to deal with the medical waste precisely”.
Zoomlion Medical Waste, Mr. Kojo Njabore pointed out is providing waste bins for the storage of the Covid vaccination waste after which, a specialized medical waste van would come to empty for safe keeping and then, transported to centralised medical waste treatment facilities to be properly disposed.
The Covid vaccination waste he said, if not properly managed can get into the hands of scavengers who are always on the dumping sites to cause health hazards on the environment.”Our role is to ensure that the spread of COVID-19 is contained”.
Every vaccination centre is provided with different bins of which; one contain the rapper of syringes and other general waste. Another one with a label of medical waste takes the cotton used to soak blood after the injection and sharps containers store the used syringes.
The disposal plant with autoclaves is supported by a steam boiler which produces steam to kill all germs and microorganisms in medical waste after which the substance is transferred to a shredder which grinds the sterilized substance for safe dumping at the company’s designated dump site without any fear of infection.
The benefit to be derived from the exercise include but not limited to: ensuring proper management of healthcare waste from all vaccination centres.
Also, to reduce the potential spread of infections from used syringes and other infectious waste, and promote environmental health and safety of humans.
