JAKARTA - Minister of Environment and Forestry (LHK) Siti Nurbaya said the amount of hazardous medical waste, especially related to handling COVID-19, reached tens of thousands of tons.
This was conveyed after attending a limited cabinet meeting (ratas) chaired by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).
"According to data that was received by the central government and recorded by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, as of July 27, there was 18.460 tons of medical waste", said Siti in a press conference broadcast online on the Presidential Secretariat's YouTube channel, Wednesday, July 28.
However, this data has not been fully recorded and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry continues to try to improve it. Moreover, based on hospital association records, COVID-19 medical waste can reach 383 tons per day.
All waste comes from health care facilities, from hospitals to self-quarantine isolation sites, COVID-19 testing sites, and vaccination sites.
The medical waste consists of used infusions, masks, vaccine bottles or disposable vaccine bottles, syringes, face shields, bandages, hazmat, personal protective equipment (PPE), gloves, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test kits, and alcohol swabs or cleaner.
With so much medical waste, Siti said, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) directed that medical waste management be carried out more intensively and systematically starting from the smallest environment such as people's homes.
"So pay attention to how the system works from home to service centers or parallel to the handling site", he said.
Siti explained that currently, the medical waste management facility which is toxic and dangerous reaches 493 tons. However, this number is only concentrated on the island of Java.
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So, this has come to the attention of President Jokowi to then order this problem to be resolved and this has been done by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry since last year.
"Since last year, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry has provided relaxation (use of incinerators, ed). So, in addition to the accelerated permit, it is also relaxation that unlicensed incinerators are allowed to operate on condition that the temperature is 800 degrees Celsius and continues to be monitored by the LHK Ministry", said Siti
Incinerator which is a tool to burn waste actually already exists in many health facilities. However, there are still tools that have not yet obtained an operational permit from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry so that the relaxation of permits is carried out.
In addition, there are other ways to manage this toxic and hazardous medical waste but will be discussed further in a meeting chaired by the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
"It was developed in the meeting that this is a domestic technique and will be explored later at the next meeting", he concluded.
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