“While Tanzania’s leading health facility, the  Dar-es-Salaam Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) boasts of having a well-managed system for disposing infectious medical waste, The Citizen on Saturday has discovered that the situation elsewhere in the country is rather appalling.

“Environmental health experts have confided to this newspaper that most of the lower level health facilities are grappling with poorly managed systems of handling the dangerous garbage, posing serious environmental and human health risks as a consequence.

‘’Hospital waste management is still a big problem in the country to date’’ Prof Samuel Manyele confirmed this week – which is about three years after he published a series of studies that exposed poor health care waste management in Tanzania.

“On the current situation, Prof Manyele remarked, ‘’Collective effort in dealing with the challenge is still lacking among health care providers and the government.’’

“Three years ago, the professor, who now doubles as the government’s Chief Chemist and Lecturer at the University of Dar-es-salaam, collaborated with other experts in publishing a study which contained shocking revelations of a slackened system of hospital waste management.

“The study warned that the city urgently needed a waste processing centre which would collect and incinerate all sharp and infectious medical waste, but according to environmental health experts however not much has changed, three years down the line.

“Conducted in Dar-es-salaam, the study titled ‘’Factors affecting medical waste management in low- level health facilities in Tanzania,’’ (African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology 2010;  4(5):304-18) revealed that most of the facilities in the city had no specific medical waste disposal sites.

“It pointed out that about 60 and 70 per cent of incinerators in the surveyed facilities in Ilala and Kinondoni municipalities, respectively, were not in good working conditions.

This situation should not surprise us. It is the sort of technology and infrastructure development area that might be funded through development grants from donor countries, or through the World Bank, but times are hard and grant support is reducing even for the most worthy of causes. The least we can do is to offer our academic and professional support, our experience and our and encouragement, in the hope that we can help no only with the provision of material resources but with training, strategy, planning and development that might support sustained improvement.