EDITORIAL: Urgently tackle medical waste disposal PROBLEM

A special report we ran yesterday detailing how at least 4,000 villagers in Mkuranga District, Coast Region, are exposed to a potentially major health crisis due to a hospital waste incinerator built in their vicinity, and emitting toxic smoke, reveals a sense of desperation in the community. There is frustration in the sprawling Dundani Village that has had to contend with stinking smoke from hundreds of tonnes of burning hospital waste.

What is mind-boggling is the fact that the facility is still operating, burning toxic medical waste and posing a genuine health threat to the village and its environs despite the authorities admitting that it was built before an Environmental Impact Assessment was conducted. That the owner of the project bought the piece of land for the facility before the area was densely-populated is not the issue.

What is now at stake are the lives of the 4,000 villagers and hundreds of students at the nearby Dundani Secondary School, which was already in existence when the facility was built. More so, there are reports of hospital waste being dumped at unauthorised areas posing yet another environmental threat.

This cannot be allowed to continue. And this is why it is critical for local government authorities and political leaders in the area to urgently put their heads together and address this problem before it’s too late.

Beyond establishing how the facility ended up near homes, or how the village was allowed to spread near the facility, authorities need to find ways of averting the looming health hazard.

World Health Organisation guidelines on the location of such incinerators are written in black and white. For example, areas near these facilities should neither be populated nor used for agriculture purposes.

The reason is that toxic waste – solid or in form of ash or smoke – affects water supply and the food chain.