Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Clinical Waste Management Under Covid-19 Scenario in Malaysia
Clinical Waste Management Under Covid-19 Scenario in Malaysia
Prof Dr Agamuthu, P.
Professor, Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development, Sunway University and High-Level Foreign
Expert, Ministry of Science and Technology, China
[email protected]
Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Clinical Waste Generation in Malaysia
• Composition of Clinical Waste
• Clinical Waste Management
• Management of Expired or Discarded Drugs
• Post-treatment of ash from incineration of clinical waste
• Clinical Waste and COVID-19
• Generation of COVID-19 clinical waste by country
• Clinical Waste Management and COVID-19
• Household clinical waste management and COVID-19
• Conclusion
2
Introduction
• Clinical waste is the waste originating from healthcare facilities and other
related facilities such as laboratories, autopsy or mortuaries etc.
• Malaysia recorded 8616 Covid-19 cases and 121 deaths as of June 28th 2020
Non-Infectious waste
80%
7
Clinical Waste Management – Regulations
Environmental Quality
(Scheduled Wastes)
The Environmental Quality
Regulations 2005
(Prescribed Premises) (Scheduled
Wastes Treatment and Disposal
Clinical waste is listed as
Facilities) Order 1989
scheduled waste in
Malaysian environmental
regulations
The Environmental Quality
(Prescribed Premises) (Scheduled
Wastes Treatment and Disposal
Facilities) Regulations 1989
Department of Environment (DOE) is responsible for all aspects of clinical waste management from collection, transportation, treatment 8
and disposal and uses online system named electronic scheduled waste management system (eSWIS) to monitor compliance
Classification of Clinical Waste
Clinical waste classification under the Environmental Quality (Scheduled Wastes) Regulations, 2005
9
Clinical Waste Management – Regulations (Cont’d)
• Clinical waste management guidelines requires scheduled wastes to be
managed properly before disposal as it could be harmful
Yellow bag for disposal of clinic waste Blue bag for autoclaving clinical waste
12
Clinical Waste Bins
Two wheel clinical waste bin Pedal operated clinical waste bins Mobile pedal operated
clinical waste bin
• expiry date exceeded after the packaging has Class II - pharmaceuticals which pose a potential hazard
been opened or the ready-to-use preparation when used improperly by unauthorized persons: managed
prepared by the user; or in an appropriate waste disposal facility
15
Biohazard symbol and labelling of clinical waste
16
Clinical Waste Management - Temporary Storage
• Some hospitals store the clinical waste generated at cold rooms as a
temporary storage until dedicated lorry arrives
17
Clinical Waste Management - Treatment
• Almost all pathological or
infectious clinical waste is
38,433
incinerated in Malaysia 40,000.00
(METRIC TONNES)
30,000.00
22,535
• Only Class III or cytotoxic 25,000.00 19,743
25,523
10,000.00
be disposed in municipal -
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
disposal site Source: Environmental Quality Reports (2013 – 2017)
18
Clinical Waste Management – Treatment (Cont’d)
Incinerator ash of clinic waste is transported to Integrated Hazardous Waste Treatment Center, is Solidified
with cement, and disposed of in secure landfill
20
Clinical Waste Management (Cont’d)
• According to environmental regulations related to clinical or
schedule waste;
21
Clinical Waste and COVID-19
● 27% increase in clinical waste following Covid-19 outbreak in Malaysia
(25 tonnes of COVID-19 clinical waste per day)
24
Clinical Waste Management and COVID-19
• COVID-19 related clinical waste is being managed through the same
regulations as for clinical waste or schedule waste
25
Household clinical waste management and COVID-19
• Abundance of masks are not properly disposed by the public
• Some of the clinical waste has ended up in the solid waste landfills which is
mostly PPE and face masks
• It also reported that about 9,000 face masks is disposed daily in Penang.
This also poses risk to the municipal workers who collected the waste from
households, shop lot and industrial area (The Sunday daily, 23rd June
2020).
26
Littering of Facemasks used as personal protective gear by public 27
Improper Disposal of face masks
28
CONCLUSION
• In Malaysia, clinical waste management is under the Federal Government
and Department of Environment
• Environmental Quality Act 1974 with recent amendments is currently being
implemented in Malaysia
• The generation of clinical waste is 90 tonnes/day or 33,000
tonnes/annually whereby about 75 to 80% is non-pathogenic waste
whereas 15% of composition is pathogenic waste and chemical and
pharmaceuticals waste, sharp waste and other waste accounts for 3%, 1%
and 1%, respectively
• The guideline on the management of clinical waste provides
comprehensive information on appropriate handling and disposal of clinical
wastes generated from hospitals and other health care facilities
29
THANK YOU