Biomedical waste management urgent to halt Covid-19: UNIDO

New Delhi, Oct 20 : The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) on Tuesday stressed the need to halt the spread of Covid-19 through all possible infection channels, including from contact with or mismanagement of infectious waste.
UNIDO Representative in India Rene Van Berkel also said that this is possible with proven biomedical waste management practices and techniques, and never before has it been so urgent to adopt these.
He was speaking at a webinar on “Managing bio-medical waste to ensure near-zero infections spread among waste management workers” organised by Communeeti, a non-profit organisation working on community-centric policy making, in partnership with the Ramaiah Medical College and supported by UNIDO-India.
UNIDO has been working to develop and implement environmentally sound practices and techniques for medical waste with 160 plus hospitals across the states of Karnataka, Punjab, Odisha, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Since the onset of Covid-19, it has been reported that project interventions have resulted in achieving near-zero Covid-19 infections among waste management workers in project hospitals.
This was done through a multi-faceted approach which included strict segregation and containment of waste supported by instructional videos, professional training, development and roll-out of Covid-19 specific biomedical waste rules, identification and promotion of suppliers of waste management related goods and services.