Abstract:
Although constituting a relatively small proportion of waste matter,
the waste produced during medical treatment and routine dispensing
of medical care is potentially the most infectious and environmentally
hazardous. Health-Care Facilities (HCF) are, therefore, duty-bound to
effectively manage the waste that they produce in order to avert
environmental pollution and risks to people’s health. This paper
reports on the findings of a recent study of current medical or Health-
Care Waste (HCW) management practices in four purposively selected
Health-Care Facilities (HCFs) in the district of Maseru, focusing on
generation, segregation, treatment and disposal practices. These
management practices are reported from a social science perspective,
with no pretensions to expert medical or biological knowledge of the
issues raised. The primary purpose of the paper is to raise public
awareness and sensitivity to this serious but generally neglected
environmental and public health issue. Evidence is adduced in the
paper to show that the HCW management practices in the four HCFs
are unhygienic and dangerously unsafe and that the HCW from these
HCFs is an environmental and public health hazard. Most
disturbingly, perhaps, is that Lesotho has neither a HCW management
policy nor guidelines, and there are no indications that such policy
will be in place in the foreseeable future.
