Another problem with Ebola

Waste disposal - from Reuters:

U.S. hospitals unprepared to handle Ebola waste
U.S. hospitals may be unprepared to safely dispose of the infectious waste generated by any Ebola virus disease patient to arrive unannounced in the country, potentially putting the wider community at risk, biosafety experts said.

Waste management companies are refusing to haul away the soiled sheets and virus-spattered protective gear associated with treating the disease, citing federal guidelines that require Ebola-related waste to be handled in special packaging by people with hazardous materials training, infectious disease and biosafety experts told Reuters.

Some more:

The issue created problems for Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the first institution to care for Ebola patients here. As Emory was treating two U.S. missionaries who were evacuated from West Africa in August, their waste hauler, Stericycle, initially refused to handle it. Stericycle declined comment.

Ebola symptoms can include copious amounts of vomiting and diarrhoea, and nurses and doctors at Emory donned full hazmat suits to protect themselves. Bags of waste quickly began to pile up.

"At its peak, we were up to 40 bags a day of medical waste, which took a huge tax on our waste management system," Emory's Dr. Aneesh Mehta told colleagues at a medical meeting earlier this month.

Emory sent staff to Home Depot to buy as many 32-gallon rubber waste containers with lids that they could get their hands on. Emory kept the waste in a special containment area for six days until its Atlanta neighbor, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helped broker an agreement with Stericycle.

That was 40 bags of waste a day from two people - imagine fifty people. They were using 32 gallon buckets - probably not filling them all the way but let's say 20 gallons of waste from two people per day. For 50 people, this would be 500 gallons which is 66 cubic feet or a space five by five feet and 2.6 feet tall. The next day, another 2.6 feet are depositied, &c

The first person who comes up with a bulletproof system for admission, storage, transport and destruction of this kind of volume will make a lot of money...

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on October 3, 2014 2:41 PM.

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