Burning the community’s health

clinic.
On arrival she sat outside the clinic premises, leaning on the fence and waited for the clinic doors to be opened. The headache never stopped. The pain was excruciating.
The sun slowly emerged from mother earth, unperturbed by her circumstances, she thought. Little had Marima just started dozing off than she was brought back to her senses.
A strong dark smoke puffed from the chimney of a small house that looked like a cottage inside the clinic fence. The smell was strong and unbearable. It smelled like roasted rotten beef. Horrible!
Marima choked and coughed as the smoke grew bigger and bigger, wafting with the morning breeze.
She was soon to find out it was an incinerator. There, hospital waste including human anatomic remains and organs or parts, waste contaminated with bacteria, viruses and fungi, and larger quantities of blood are burnt.
Marima and many other people awaiting treatment had to back off for a distance, until the clinic doors were opened.
The situation did not change when they got inside, either. Smoke was collecting inside and so was the smell and the patients had to brave the stench. Did they have an option? They needed treatment.
An asthmatic female patient started whizzing and coughing heavily. A nurse came to assist her explaining that the smoke was coming from the clinic incinerator. This day it was burning clinical waste, placentas and stillborn babies.
The incinerator at Mabvuku Clinic was built last year and has not been received very well by the residents around the clinic. The residents feel it has brought more harm than good to the environment.
Residents of New Mabvuku had for years been struggling with dust emanating from Circle Cement (now called Lafarge), a cement processing plant in the same area. While the residents were still blaming Lafarge for the high incidents of asthma in the area, a new threat had emerged.
A lady running a market stall near the clinic, said it was better that the clinic disposes of the placentas and clinical waste as they were doing in the past.
“It is better that they take their waste to wherever they were taking them in the previous years. I think they used to take them to Nazareth (Beatrice Infectious Diseases Hospital) rather than put our lives at risk like this,” she said.
She accused the clinic staff of forgetting that the clinic was built in a residential area. Instead of the clinic burning its waste at night when the air is calm they do it in broad daylight. The nearby Kamunhu shopping Centre had not been spared either.
“The smoke affects us a lot and on Monday there was a very strong smell coming from that thing. We were very convinced that it is a baby who had died at birth or a baby from a miscarriage. But, either way we are very convinced that it was not just the usual placentas.
“It is the smell of burnt meat and for some of us, at times it happens when we are just about to start eating. Imagine! With the knowledge of what they usually burn it is like the smell is all over my food. At times I lose my appetite,” said a lady identified as Mrs Mabu.
Another resident Mr Sekeramayi Makazhu said he was not happy at all because of the smell adding that he fears that the combination of smoke and dust from Lafarge might cause health problem for the locals.
“This thing is the reason why we have a lot of TB cases in Mabvuku how can one survive when living under such conditions?” questioned Mr Makazhu.
Health officials at the clinic say the incinerator, though very smelly, was a noble idea because it helps them to dispose of the waste and placentas, which if kept for just a day might be a health hazard.
Hospitals and many clinics have incinerators but for some unspecified reason, Mabvuku Clinic seems to have gone on the spotlight for something that has been in existence at many medical facilities for ages, just because of its location.
In recent times, the disposal of hospital and infectious waste had become a growing concern because hospitals and clinics had been dumping in the wrong places, burning and burying the waste irresponsibly.
When incinerating infectious or pathogenic waste, medical incinerators run the risk of creating harmful emissions of pollutants such as dioxins (a group of toxic chemical compounds that share certain chemical structures and biological characteristics).
Dioxins are some of the most toxic chemicals known to science. A draft report released for public comment in September 1994 by the US Environmental Protection Agency clearly describes dioxin as a serious public health threat and according to the document there seem to be safe level of exposure to dioxin.
“At start-up, the furnace is heated using the available support burners.
“Every day, after the last charge of waste has been dosed, the furnaces are kept at temperature for another one to two and a half hours using the burners. Subsequently, the furnace is cooled by leading ambient air through it for a number of hours,” he added.
Last week Friday, Harare hospital whose incinerator had broken down some time back buried 700 neonatal infants after the intervention of a local funeral company and the Registrar General’s office.
The hospital said it was stuck with the bodies because they had no funding to use for burial and the incinerator had broken down so they were stuck with the bodies for a long time. Efforts to get a comment from the responsible authorities were fruitless as the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare Public relations officer Mr Donald Mujiri referred all questions to the Harare City Council’s department of waste management.
“I cannot comment because all clinics are administered by local authorities and in this case, the City Health department,’’ said Mr Mujiri.
Leslie Gwindi of the Harare City Council was not picking up his phone.