Ghana enters into a new partnership for medical waste management. The agreement signed between the Ghanaian Ministry of Health and Zoompak Ghana, the subsidiary of the Jospong Group of Companies (JGC), is for the disposal of medical waste from the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Vaccination began on March 2nd, 2021, after the first 600,000 doses of vaccine were delivered on February 24th, 2021 under the Covax initiative. This first wave of immunisation targets people in the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Central regions of Ghana.
To achieve its goal, Zoompak Ghana, in partnership with the Turkish Campak Group, has distributed a total of 3,500 bins across Ghana to facilitate the separation of medical waste at source. “Some of the sorted waste will be collected by dedicated trucks and taken to the medical waste treatment centre at Teshie in the Greater Accra Region,” explains Senam Tengey, the Head of the Medical Waste Department at Zoompak Ghana.
Zoompak Ghana is currently developing additional facilities in all 16 regions of Ghana to accommodate the remaining waste that will be generated during the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. “Each regional facility will have an autoclave supported by a steam boiler. The steam produced will be used to kill all germs and micro-organisms in the medical waste. It will then be transferred to a machine that shreds the sterilised waste for safe disposal at a pre-determined site,” says Senam Tengey.
The Ghanaian government plans to build 14 more treatment units to manage and dispose of medical waste throughout the country. Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made the announcement on March 9th, 2021 in Accra in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Inès Magoum