The Wa Municipal Hospital is in dire need of an incinerator to help manage its waste materials, Madam Sahadatu Mohammed, the Environmental Health Officer at the facility has appealed.
She said waste management at the facility had been a major challenge since its old incinerator broke down some time ago, forcing the management to resort to the use of pits to manage waste materials including placentas.
Madam Mohammed said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa while responding to concerns from some business operators around the hospital about pungent odour that emanated from the facility causing discomfort to them and feared it could affect their health.
Madam Mohammed appealed to the Government and benevolent individuals and organisations to as of a matter of urgency, come to their aid by providing an incinerator to ensure effective waste management.
According to Mr Nbaa Ibrahim, a vulganizer behind the hospital wall along the main Wa-Kumasi Road, sometimes the stench become so severe that customers were unable to withstand it.
“We have no other option that’s why we are still operating here. Sometimes, when our customers come here, they complain about the smell, and some don’t come back.
“This is what we also do to survive and if we leave here where will we go again? So, our appeal is that the hospital should solve this problem for us. That’s all what we want,” he intimated.
Meanwhile, Madam Mohammed explained that the odour was emanating from a placenta pit at the facility and said they were doing their best to manage it but observed that an incinerator would have brought a lasting solution to the problem.
“We used to give the placenta to the women’s relatives to bury but we realized that it was not helping because dogs sometimes had access to the buried placenta. So, we dug a septic tank type of pit, about six feet with a vent pipe where we drop the placenta.
“We have a mixture of three different chemicals, which we use to treat the waste in the pit, twice a week, but because of financial challenges, we are not able to get all the chemicals all the time, so we manage with what we have, but it is also the mixture of the three chemicals that is very effective”, she explained.
She added that Zoomlion Ghana Limited used to convey the refuse at the facility but had stopped because the facility owed the waste management company, which had also compelled them to dispose of clinical waste in a pit.
