The government has taken the initiative to improve waste disposal mechanisms for health centres in Mashonaland East on the back of an increased generation of medical waste that came with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The pandemic came with an unprecedented surge in volumes of medical waste that included test kits, PPEs, syringes, vials among many others, creating a threat to human and environmental health.
With the acceleration of vaccine deployment to achieve head immunity, this also entailed increased generation of medical waste from vaccination activities.
Dealing with the massive amount of infectious healthcare waste became an enormous challenge.
Mashonaland Provincial Medical Director Dr Paul Matsvimbo said the pandemic had brought to the fore the inadequacies of the existing waste disposal methods.
"There is a strong nexus between infection prevention control and waste management. As institutions deliver care for Covid-19, as we improve and increase access to reproductive and maternal health we also generate waste.
"There is a waste management plan for the province where we move the waste to particular areas and clusters where we can incinerate it so that our institutions are not hazards.
"If we keep waste and clutter in our institutions, we can have another epidemic of medical errors. So we wanted to prevent that as we dealt with this epidemic," he said.
Mutawatawa District Hospital was one of the health facilities to implement the project under the Health Sector Development Support additional financing V supported by Government of Zimbabwe in partnership with the World Bank (WB) and Cordaid.
To ensure the continued provision of health care services in an environmentally sustainable manner, clinics and health centres in the district received support to transport waste to Mutawatawa for onward transportation to Marondera provincial hospital for incineration.
Mutawatawa is a collection hub for all the 20 clinics in the district and the waste is then transported once every month to Marondera hospital.
This has meant that health centres do not have to hold on to huge volumes of waste.
UMP District Medical Officer Dr Gladman Mbonani before the project implementation, improper segregation of waste from health facilities had resulted in constant breakdown of the incinerator at the provincial hospital.
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"After training of our environmental health staff, we now have proper waste segregation and management and we have since reduced the number of breakdowns of the incinerator at Marondera Hospital," he said.
Environmental Health Officer Mr Bernard Munatswa said all sharp medical products like needles and razors were now being placed separately in sharp boxes before being transported.
"We need to manage our waste properly because if we randomly dispose of it into the environment, it becomes a hazard. We have different types of medical waste that we generate and some of it like the sharps (needles, razors) can end up pricking people and we can have this waste contaminating the environment including water sources.
"We used to have people throwing everything in one box so we agreed with all departments to make sure that we have sharp boxes on their own, vials on their own so that we can dispose of them accordingly. We want to manage waste appropriately to keep the environment and public safe," he said.
He said Mutawatawa hospital had also constructed a new auto way pit to ensure proper disposal of waste from the maternity ward.
The auto way pit is where material that decomposes naturally is disposed of.
