On Tuesday (1 February), the UN health body published the ‘Global analysis of health care waste in the context of COVID-19’.
Around 87,000 tonnes of personal protective equipment (PPE) was procured in the period between March 2020 and November 2021 and shipped to countries in need through a joint UN emergency response.
“Most of this equipment is expected to have ended up as waste,” the WHO press release said. But the analysis also highlighted that this is only “a small fraction of global procurement”, as PPE produced outside of the UN system is not taken into account – as well as public waste such as face masks.
The report found that the over 140 million test kits might be responsible for generating up to 2,600 tonnes of non-infectious waste, mainly plastic, and 731,000 litres of chemical waste, equivalent to one-third of an Olympic-size swimming pool.
In the meantime, over 8 billion doses of vaccine have been administered globally, resulting in 144,000 tonnes of additional waste in the form of syringes, needles, and safety boxes.
“It is absolutely vital to provide health workers with the right PPE,” said Michael Ryan, Executive Director at WHO Health Emergencies Programme. “But it is also vital to ensure that it can be used safely without impacting on the surrounding environment.”
But as COVID-19 surged, more attention was paid to securing supplies of PPE, while less attention was given “to the safe and sustainable management of COVID-19 related health care waste,” as written in the WHO press release.
It means that countries lacked effective management systems in place, as well as guidance for health workers on what to do with PPE and health commodities after they have been used.
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