THE Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) has reported that its US$1M Hydroclave Waste Sterilization System is approximately 95 per cent completed, and is expected to be functional by the second week of next month.
According to the GPHC’s Public Relations Office, the hospital’s officials are awaiting the return of the Canadian consultants who will commission the system; and a conveyer system which will be used to deposit the shredded materials into the compactor, a minor detail.
Additionally, reports are that there are other minor installations being done to the entire facility, both building and machinery, to ensure their full readiness for the November commissioning.
The new system is expected to facilitate the GPHC as well as health care facilities in Georgetown and environs in handling bio-medical waste.
Bio-medical waste is any solid or liquid waste which may present a threat of infection to humans. It includes non-liquid tissue, body parts, blood, blood products, and body fluids from humans and other primates, laboratory and veterinary wastes which contain human disease-causing agents, and discarded sharps.
Bio-medical waste, if not handled in a proper way, is a potent source of diseases, like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis and other bacterial diseases, causing serious threats to human health.
In a recent interview with Director of Facilities Management at the GPHC, Parmanand Samaroo, the Hydroclave system introduces a number of benefits for health facilities.
Among those he highlighted were the reduction of bacteria to 99.9 per cent after bio-medical waste is sterilized; having an end product of dry waste, regardless of its original water content; no odors due to the dryness; volume reduction to about 85 per cent of the original volume; weight reduction to 70 per cent of original weight; and wide acceptance of end product as harmless waste.
The Hydroclave system will be operational in a few months and will be sited at the Northwestern section of the ‘N’ Block of the GPHC
The Hydroclave system has five components: a specially designed and dedicated vehicle to transport bagged infectious waste for treatment; a scale to monitor the waste from every healthcare facility; a double-walled cylindrical vessel which processes the waste; a shredder which provides post-processed shredding of the waste; a compacter to reduce the volume of treated waste; a bin to collect and store treated/ compacted waste, and a skip truck to take bins of treated waste to a municipal landfill.
The system uses essentially a cylindrical vessel, horizontally mounted, with one or more top loading doors, and a smaller unloading one at the bottom. The vessel is fitted with a motor driven shaft, to which are attached powerful fragmenting/mixing arms that slowly rotate the vessel. When steam is introduced in the vessel jacket, it transmits heat rapidly to the fragmented waste, which in turn produces steam of its own. During the process, the waste is shredded and dehydrated, and harmful micro-organisms are destroyed.
Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy’s contention is that with the new system to treat bio-medical waste, Guyana has moved one step ahead.
Dr Ramsammy observed that treatment of not only bio-medical waste, but waste generated by the health sector generally, in the past has not been recognized as a public health problem.