Waste management company, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, has assured Ghanaians that the collection of medical waste at the vaccination centres in the ongoing national vaccination programme go through treatment before finally disposed of.
According to the Zoomlion General Manger, Accra Zone, Mr Ernest Morgan Acquah, the treatment of the medical waste is crucial in preventing their workers who collect them from contracting any infectious viruses or bacteria causing diseases.
“These medical waste are hazardous so they undergo treatment before we put them at the final disposal site. And that will also ensure that scavengers are not infected with any infectious disease,” he said.
Mr Morgan Acquah gave the assurance on Saturday, September 4, 2021, when he briefed journalists at the Nima Government Hospital in Accra on Zoomlion’s role in the nationwide vaccination programme.
According to him, Zoomlion, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS), was ensuring that medical waste collected at the vaccination centres were properly treated and safely disposed.
“As part of our job, we have provided them [the vaccination centres] with bins. And with these bins we have segregation—one for general waste and the other for medical waste,” he said.
Zoomlion, he continued, has also provided specialised vehicles and workers who move to the vaccination centres to pick up the medical waste to the final disposal site.
“When they pick up the medical waste, these waste go through treatment before we put them at the final disposal site. This is being done to prevent the workers picking up the medical waste from being infected or scavengers who often go on scavenging spree at dumping sites from the risk of being infected,” he noted.
To facilitate their operations, Mr Morgan Acquah disclosed that his company has procured a number of autoclaves, adding that “with these autoclaves what we do is when we pick up the medical waste from the centres, we have specialised vehicles that pick up the waste then we go to the centres that we have the autoclaves and we put in the medical waste. The waste go through heating and after heating some are burnt before we do disposal,” he explained.
He indicated in the Greater Accra Region, Zoomlion and its partners are undertaking the operation in about 43 centres.
From the Nima Government Hospital, the Zoomlion medical waste team moved to the Rock Hospital, Odorkor, where residents who had already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine were being given the second jab.
