Health Care Without Harm, an international coalition of NGOs working on medical waste presented some low-cost, easily replicable, non-burn treatment technologies that are safer for public health, workers and the environment on
7th April, 2003, on the occasion of World Health Day.

As immunization and rural health programs expand in India, the problem of medical waste treatment and disposal in rural areas becomes critical! Rural areas tend to follow the dangerous path taken by urban areas before them and to depend on health-impacting combustion technologies.

In view of this growing concern, Health Care Without Harm has launched an international competition for innovative non-burn technologies to deal with medical waste treatment in rural areas. Two of the winning entries in the Honorable Mention category are from India! Vikrant Chitnis, PhD student at Choithram Hospital and Research Centre, Indore, has developed a box-type solar cooker for medical waste disinfection and Abhishek Jain and his team, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, have designed an autoclave with internal shredder.

Health Care Without Harm announced the winners of its international contest for innovative non-incineration technologies to treat medical waste in developing areas. The winning conceptual designs – revealed today as the international community observes World Health Day 2003 and the theme of “Healthy Environments for Children” – will be made available in the public domain.

“These technologies provide a solution to a problem faced by many poor rural communities, which are burning medical waste and polluting the air with dioxin, mercury and other toxins because they lack access to affordable alternative technologies that are available in industrialized countries,” said Gary Cohen, director of Health Care Without Harm, an international campaign to reduce the environmental impact of health care (www.noharm.org).

“We congratulate our winners for creating low-cost, easily replicable, non-burn treatment technologies that are safer for public health, workers and the environment.”

First place and $5,000 went to the Team of Rys Hardwick-Jones of the University of Sydney, Australia, for a solar-powered autoclave system named Prometheus, which is portable and can be used in any weather conditions. Second place and $1,500 went to M.G. Holliday of Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals, United Kingdom, for a simple system that combines mechanical grinding with boiling water to treat medical waste. Third place and $1,000 was awarded to the Team of Prof.. Mark Bricka and Allissa Willis of Mississippi State University, USA for a proposal to treat waste through the heat generated by a chemical reaction involving lime and subsequent hardening of the waste into a cement-like material.

Five Honorable Mentions were awarded $100 each. Two of them were awarded to Indian researchers! Vikrant Chitnis, from Choithram Hospital and Research Centre, Indore, has developed a box-type solar cooker for disinfection and Abhishek Jain and his team, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, have designed an autoclave with internal shredder.

Chitnis has developed a box-type solar cooker for medical waste disinfection.

The cooker can accommodate 10 kg of waste at once and requires a capital cost of just Rs 1700. The design is ideal for treating medical waste in the rural areas where electricity and fuel are limited. Substantial experimental work was carried out by Vikrant Chitnis to confirm the efficacy of the solar disinfection process of hospitals infectious waste. Any unskilled worker can operate it in the health care facility. The temperature attained in the design is around 70-900 C, which is maintained for a period of 6 hours. Solar energy is freely available in a number of developing countries and this is one more innovative application for treating medical waste. The present design can be scaled up for treating larger volumes of medical waste.

“These innovative designs can be built using local materials and operated with little or no electricity, and they do not require highly skilled labor,” said Dr. Jorge Emmanuel, a medical waste consultant who chaired the panel of international judges for the contest. “As the World Health Organization (WHO) expands immunization and rural health programs, the problem of medical waste treatment and disposal in rural areas is becoming critical. These technologies are potential solutions to this problem.” Winners were selected for designs that best met technical criteria developed in consultation with WHO. Complete design descriptions are available at www.medwastecontest.org. The contest results will also be presented at a reception in Geneva on May 21 to coincide with the WHO General Assembly.

What remains to uncovered in India is rural India. The poor rural waste health care delivery,including the new immunisation drives using disposable syringes are being dealt with criminal callousness. The Union Ministry Of Health and State governments would do well to put the the corrective mechanism in place. The treatment options for the disposal of waste generated in rural areas needs to be carefully weighed to address the risk operational defeciencies can pose.