Health Care Organization’s Waste Situations
Introduction
In most health care organizations, the problem of waste disposal is very common especially where the organization is located in the remote areas where the population is low and ignorant. Due to the low and poor livelihood of people in those areas garbage sorting and collection activities have the residents come into contact with waste unaware of the consequences. This is a threat to the health and survival of such a community and unless great care and precautions are observed the health care system will be at great loss. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problem of health care wastes, effects as well as the structure of such a health care organization and the effective recommendations to correct such a problem.
Health news situation affecting the health care organizations in remote areas
According to the World health organization (2008) health care wastes consists of blunt objects, sharps objects like pins injections, dangerous chemicals, radioactive materials and blood and body parts among others all of which should be keenly disposed and safely managed. Mishandling of such waste exposes the community, health workers and the handlers of such wastes to great hazards of infections, toxic effects and injuries. One responsibility of the world health organization is the generation of national plans of actions, rules and guidelines of national health care management of used up and unnecessary substances and materials and guidelines and capacity building especially in countries characterized by low incomes to citizens. This is made possible by the creation and distribution of health care materials containing the right guidelines for determining the type and quantity of waste yielded from various health facilities.
The problem of waste management is rampant in developing countries and low resource communities in developed countries where most of the financial systems are faced with the problem of low finance that cannot fully support these laid down rules and regulations of WHO, and in remote areas where the population is sparse and most land bare and abandoned and the ignorance of the health care practitioners is at its greatest level. Such practices are also associated with environmental impacts as a result of creation and generation of waste by health care organizations. This can be prevented by the following the proper health care waste disposal, yet most nations don’t dedicate enough resources to such practices or the resources are dedicated but end up being misused by the authorities and other high rank professional in the health care systems especially in the developing countries where corruption is a major drawback. In addition, the health care institutions may fail to avail the proper waste disposal guidelines to waste handlers who end up being infected or infected in one way or the other.
Currently, the major concern for most health care organizations is in preventative health care is one role of the health care organization and equally so is the process of proper waste management. The guidelines outlined by the royal college of nursing (2007) classify health care wastes into two main categories namely hazardous waste and non-hazardous waste. The hazardous waste consist all infectious waste, radioactive wastes, x-ray wastes, health care chemicals and health care chemicals as well as cytotoxic and cytostatic medicals. The non-hazardous waste are in the likes of domestic waste, food wastes, offensive wastes, packaging wastes and food wastes as well as reusable materials. For proper analysis of health care wastes, both hazardous and non-hazardous waste are then classified as either clinical, infectious and medicinal, and non-clinical wastes which include offensive or hygiene wastes.
The most rampant diseases in the poor waste management communities are the infectious diseases that are caused by the clinically infectious wastes (royal college of nursing 2007). This is mainly from the sharp infected objects. To some victims whose value for money is in basic commodities, the thought of visiting a health care organization for medical check up is seen as a waste of money and so most opt to seek no medical attention. As a result, the infections end up overwhelming the patient some of whom end up dieing or remaining paralyzed for the rest of their lives. Other medical chemicals may affect the proper functioning of the body like vision, or skin causing skin disorders that isolate the patients from the rest of the society causing trauma and hopelessness due to dependency. Such ailments may be transferred to many generations and appear like a curse which it is not. To the affected community, this affects income capacity lowers the quality of living standards. To the health care organizations, this is a negative image that makes people lose confidence in what opt to take care of their health.
The corporate structure and governance, culture, and social responsibility
In low income communities and countries, the corporate structure is filled with irresponsible medical professionals who prioritize other things and ignore the health of the community around them. Such a structure is more concern with what it provides to the community in terms of preventative health care and not what relationship should prevail between the organization and the community in general. More often than not, such officials squander financial resources meant for proper waste management and put excuses on the current economic status of the country. In some countries, like the United States, money is prioritized on other functions like the fight to end terrorism at the expense of the citizens making it hard for most of the citizens in low income communities both insured and uninsured to experience financial hardships.
With such leadership and management in health organizations, the health practitioners adopt a culture contrary to the recommended health practices that one is taught during in the college education level. This bad culture accumulates due to lack of health practices routine check ups and the lack of a waste management team of staff who are held responsible for poor health care waste disposal. There also lacks plans on how waste should be managed making it impossible to account for how much of any given waste the society is at risk of at any given moment. Such health institutions also adopt the culture of burning wastes in the open which in return affects the community’s air and soil causing pollutions, which affect animals, people and plants.
Recommended resources
Financial resources
The main problem in such implementations is finance especially in low income communities. With the right quantity of financial resources, the health organization can be in position to establish a waste management team that will see to it that all guidelines available from WHO and other health organs concerning waste disposal are fully implemented and the necessary costs incurred in such processes are met (world health organization 2005.
The establishment of this team should also be with the condition that there be proper reports following any action of waste management and the costs incurred to reduce or eradicate corruption of some officials. Finance should also be set aside to put up proper infrastructure like chimneys which are far off the ground to facilitate the burning of wastes that are not biodegradable like the boxes, cartons, plastic bottles among others. Such chimneys will ensure all smoke that can contaminate the air for human consumptions will be far off. On the other hand, this will still contribute to environmental degradation and ozone layer depletion in case of harmful toxins in the atmosphere (world health organization 2005.
Information resources
Information resources include ways by which workers and the community at large would be provided with sufficient information concerning health care waste management. This is because, when patients are recommended with drugs for domestic consumption, they tend to be a little careless and ignorant and end up disposing unused drugs, bottles and other non clinical wastes like sanitary in a way likely to pose health hazards to their health. It is therefore advisable that health officials seize the opportunities to educate patients on proper clinical and non clinical waste management (world health organization 2005.
The health organization should, with the help of an infection control nurse, organize and supervise the staff’s training sessions where all key officials must be in attendant. Such training will go a long way in changing the culture of a given organization where everyone will take is as a responsibility to ensure the patients are well treated and provided with the right information on how to act in disposing any waste (world health organization 2005).
Disposal resources
Chemical wastes can be disposed off in a dug pits that are well covered and deep enough to prevent the assessment by the community. In the remote areas, it is advisable that proper fencing be put around the disposal settings to prevent spread to the community and the environment.
Recommended changes to structure, governance, culture and social responsibility
To curb such problems, the best thing to do is for any health care institution to delegate and assign responsibilities to staff. This will go hand in hand with the establishment of a plan that will see through the implementation process of managing waste. The team should incorporate officers from the local authority as well as have community representatives who will follow closely on everything said and done and dispense such to the community. In addition,
In the disposals of wastes from the health care, the team should ensure that the waste is first segregated, stored, transported and properly disposed and managed. In addition, any accident or incidents of waste disposal injuries should be reported as soon as they occur to the infection control nurse to establish the cause and provide proper treatment to the waste handling personnel. The main importance of waste segregation is to assist in the controlling the costs involved in management of waste as well as facilitating waste storage, transportation and disposal (Royal College 2007). The final stage after waste segregation is waste assessment to determine the amount of chemical, infection, and offensive properties present in any type of health waste and each represented with waste color convention for coding.
Conclusions
The paper has tackled the health care waste management especially in low income communities and countries and remote areas. One main problem for the low income communities and countries is finance while in the remote areas it is ignorance and poor work culture and administration lack of efficiency in waste management. Waste is classified into clinical and non-clinical which have different impacts on the community. The recommend resources are the formation of on waste management implementation team to ensure all finances information and waste disposal resources are utilized to the benefit of the health organization and the community at large.
References
Royal Nursing (2007). Safe management of health care waste. Royal nursing college. London: UK. From http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/111082/003205.pdf.
World Health (2005). Health care management of waste. Retrieved on 12-05-2011 from http://www.healthcarewaste.org/en/340_manag_medium.html last updated 2006
World health (2008). Safe management: health care waste. Retrieved on 12-05-2011 from http://www.healthcarewaste.org/en/115_overview.html last updated on 2008
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