Covid-19 pandemic and poor (PPE) waste management: A double jeopardy for the Nigerian people.
Nigeria might record an unprecedented numbers of new cases of Covid-19 pandemic in the coming period if massive health education is not given on medical waste management.
The Nigerian Government has failed to put in place all needed mechanisms to contain the pandemic. Nigeria has no better means of waste management and the implication of this is that it has further worsen the case of Covid-19 in Nigeria and this has gone unnoticed for over 6weeks.
Waste management remain the most pressing environmental challenge in Nigeria, adding Covid-19 pandemic to it makes it more complicating and a double jeopardy for the Nigerians.
The Nigerian government has not in any way provided a sanitary means of waste collection, storage and final disposal or recycling. Most of the major streets in the major cities are over-flooded with waste materials, most especially in the core-northern region. The Lagos state government since 1999 has failed to adopt a long lasting panacea in resolving the issue of waste management. Private individuals and companies have at all times being deploy to handle the issue of waste collection and management and what that implies is that the waste are only to be collected if the community members agree to pay a certain amount of money, anybody who failed to pay will not be attended to. This is against the 1999 Nigeria constitution that state that it is the primary responsibility of the local government to manage/dispose refuse. With growing fears of coronavirus and the lack of sanitary waste management, the issue of PPE waste has become a serious health challenge and it has unknowingly increased the number of covid-19 cases in Nigeria. This is unknown to the most people including the Doctors and every other front-line worker. The number of the newly confirmed cases of covid-19 in Nigeria shows that the medical workers are more infected with the pandemic more than ever before. The sole reason for this is that the workers that have direct contact with the used PPE are those who get infected easily. The used PPE are not properly disposed or managed in most of our hospitals; indiscriminate disposal of PPE has posed so much challenge to the health sector including the hospital cleaners, ambulance drivers and the hospital securities.
The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and the Federal Ministry of Health has failed to provide the frontline workers with waste bin which can be used in the disposal of the PPE, neither do they health educate the medical personnel including the volunteers on how to better handle and dispose the PPE and every other medical waste.
The Environmental Health Officers and other health practitioners posted at the port of entries in communities in Nigeria find it difficult to dispose their PPE at the port of entries. These people have launched a complaint to the appropriate authorities (Federal Ministry of Health and the NCDC) to provide a sanitary waste bin for them and also, to make provision on how the PPE are to be sanitarily disposed.
All of these have no practical meaning to the NCDC and Federal Ministry of Health; sanitary waste management is very key in the containment of the Covid-19 if seriously we want to defeat this pandemic as a nation.
In the absence of the Federal Ministry of Health and the Nigeria Center for Disease Control to provide people with health education of the sanitary way of handling PPE and the sanitary means for PPE disposal, we of the Greenwaves Environmental Consult have fill-in that space with massive health education (side by side the temperature screening) a process toward the containment of Covid-19 through the sanitary ways of PPE handling and management.
Join us and support us with sanitary waste bin which will be distributed to the whole Port of Entries in Nigeria and to the Nigeria hospitals in order to have a sanitary means of PPE management and together curtail the spread of Covid-19 in Nigeria.
Akande Daniel B.
