Kenya - National Health Care Waste Management Plan

IGAD Regional HIV/AIDS Partnership Program (IRAPP) Support Project is a multinational Program of the World Bank for Africa. Its general objectives are to help Governments in Africa to formulate and implement measurements to fight against the AIDS/HIV disease and tuberculosis. It is hoped that the program will help to contribute to the change in the behavior of the countries' population in order to contain or to reduce the spread of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS and to lessen the impact of it on the infected and affected people. The broad objective of the study was to undertake a situational analysis of health care waste management through assessment of policy, legal and administrative framework through a multi-sector approach including generation, segregation, storage and disposal systems of Health Care Waste (HCW), what is generally referred to as "cradle to grave" of health care waste management. The study also assessed the existing technologies, levels and presence of scavenging and recycling; established the cost benefits of public-private partnership in health care waste management and finally reviewed existing training curricula, identifying unmet needs and proposing appropriate and affordable strategies for the training at various levels. The study recommends that the different governmental services coordinate their activities in a better way and share information more systematically in order to monitor more efficiently the services provided in the Health Sector. The study stresses that although the management of health care risk waste has become a serious concern, few governments in the African continent have provided guidance on their effective management. The implementation of this project has many potential negative impacts, including: 1) Insufficient training and education results in HCW management practices not being environmentally sound; 2) Insufficient or inappropriate reusable and disposable HCW containers used results in pollution from either HCRW spillage or HCW streams being mixed with untreated HCRW disposed of on general waste disposal sites; 3) HCRW containers that are not resistant to inclement weather conditions are stored in the open, resulting in such containers being damaged by the environment, which in turn leads to spillage or in contamination of storm water; 4) Budget constraints impacts on HCW management systems adopted, equipment used as well as treatment efficiencies, all contributing towards poor treatment and disposal practices; 5) Incinerators are not appropriately designed and where designed, not operated according to the manufacturer's guidelines, thus resulting in pollution through emissions, with untrained operators being unaware of the consequences; and 6) The disposal of residues from the treatment of HCRW to landfill not only results in air emissions, but also in a number of other environmental factors such as generation and discharge of leachate and land use.