Hospitals in the N. Rift struggle to manage and dispose of their waste

Most counties in the North Rift are struggling to dispose of waste from hospitals as devolved units have not been allocated money to buy incinerators.

The sole incinerator at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret cannot adequately handle tonnes of clinical waste hospitals in the vast region generate.

In Trans Nzoia, two incinerators that served the county are now only partially working, and heaps of medical equipment and expired drugs are yet to be destroyed.

A county government official, who sought anonymity, said that most hospitals depend on the incinerators at Mt Elgon and Cherang’anyi hospitals but the machines are not operating fully.

INCENERATOR

“The two institutions still take waste from other hospitals, but they are finding it difficult to dispose of it,” the county health official told the Nation yesterday.

He added that medical waste needs to be destroyed safely in order to avert hazards.

“Sharp waste like injection needles that are not fully destroyed are dangerous even to the incinerator operators. The devolved government should step in before hospitals begin to dump their waste carelessly," he added.

Elgeyo-Marakwet County faces a similar problem although the devolved unit says the incinerator being built is almost complete.

Health executive Kiprono Chepkok said that the county government would build burning chambers in the region's 123 hospitals at a cost of Sh6.1 billion.

Health officials, he added, have made sure that the waste is kept safely before being destroyed.

“We have ensured that almost every public hospital in Elgeyo-Marakwet County has a septic tank and a bio-digester. The construction of burning chambers in our hospitals is 70 per cent complete,” Dr Chepkok said.

“The first burning chambers to be completed will be used by other hospitals.”

Hospitals in Baringo County rely on incinerators at Kabarnet County Referral and Eldama Ravine District hospitals.

“The small hospitals and health centres do not have incinerators and so they bring their waste here,” a Kabarnet County Referral Hospital doctor, who referred to himself as Kalya, said.

HEPATITIS

In Uasin Gishu County, Oak Tree Hospital, which mainly handles kidney and other chronic diseases, takes its waste to MTRH for incineration.

According to the World Health Organisation, contaminated syringes were responsible for up to 33,800 HIV infections worldwide in 2010.

More than 1.7 million hepatitis B and 315,000 hepatitis C infections were as a result of contaminated syringes in the same year.

Chemical and heavy metals are some of the waste produced by hospitals.

Others are radioactive materials, and infectious and pathological items.

The national guidelines for the management of healthcare waste state that every hospital must have a plan, including packaging, segregation, labelling, transporting, storage, tracking, treatment and disposal.