The company Saïss Environnement is opening its capital to Best Health, the subsidiary of Best Financière, a partner of health professionals in medical and surgical equipment. Best Health thus becomes a majority shareholder in the Moroccan company that develops solutions for the management of medical and pharmaceutical waste in Morocco.
Best Health, a subsidiary of Best Financière, has become the majority shareholder of Saïss Environnement. According to Adil Bennani, the director of Best Health, the acquisition of a stake in Saïss Environnement is part of its sustainable development strategy and will enable it to provide appropriate medical and pharmaceutical waste management solutions to health professionals in Morocco.
These include hospitals, analysis laboratories, doctors and veterinarians. For Best Health, the choice of Saïss Environnement is not accidental. The company, located in Meknes, Morocco, was the first to offer medical waste treatment services in the kingdom (since 2004). To date, it has absorbed 34% of this type of waste, out of the 22 000 tonnes produced each year in Morocco. This includes gloves, masks, gowns, syringes, etc.
If not properly managed, medical waste, especially chemical waste, poses risks of air, water and soil pollution and exposes humans and other plants to harmful effects. Best Health’s project supports the Moroccan government’s policy to make medical waste inert and safe by eliminating microbiological risk. Moroccan regulations require producers of such waste to sort and process it in approved facilities.
A project to build a medical waste treatment plant has been under study in Morocco since 2019. It will be implemented by a joint venture between Veos, a Moroccan subsidiary of Veolia, and SOS NDD, a company based in Casablanca. More restrictive measures have been taken in Moroccan cities to reduce pollution from medical waste.
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In 2022, the Casablanca City Council decided to strictly enforce Law No. 28-00, on waste management and disposal, which stipulates that anyone living in the city who dumps their waste, including medical waste, outside of designated areas, risks paying a fine ranging from 200 to 10,000 Moroccan dirhams (18 to 931 euros). If the hazardous waste is mixed with other types of waste, the fine ranges from 100,000 to 2,000,000 Moroccan dirhams (9,300 to 18,600 euros), with a possible prison sentence of three months to two years.
Inès Magoum
