100 hygiene workers infected in northern Mitrovica

The management system with industrial waste in northern Kosovo does not exist, which means medical waste usually ends up in garbage containers and this poses danger for citizens, but mostly for medical staff in the northern institutions.

About 100 workers carrying hygiene in health institutions in northern Mitrovica and in other northern municipalities have “gained” hepatitis disease, as they are killed in needles used that have not been removed from syringes and thrown into containers.

The only way to solve this problem is to make the quality implementation of the management system with medical waste, is found in a discussion on the “management topic with the medical remains north of Kosovo” under the “Country of responsibility” programme, which they convey to local media north of Mitrovica, writes “Zer<5>.

Prof.dr. Alexander Corac, professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the Serbian University of Pristina in Mitrovica, has estimated that the medical waste management system is bad throughout Kosovo, but the worst situation is in Serbian environments.

There should be a management of medical waste anyway, but unfortunately there is no. Overall, the situation is bad throughout Kosovo, in Albanian medical waste management facilities it is very little developed, while we insist that 10 years begin with the implantation of the medical waste management system in Kosovo, not just in the north. Medical waste is usually thrown into the trash container, and that is the greatest danger. The risk of medical waste has been experienced by staff and other staff at health institutions and that the largest number of contracting hepatitis from industrial waste has occurred on health workers' staff, especially in hygiene workers”, Corac said.

According to him, syringes are thrown away without turning away needles and thus slaughtered in needles and thus acquired hepatitis.

For example, 100 workers who carry hygiene are ill, while they have only two, as if there were medical waste management systems. They're slaughtered in those needles and thus earned hepatitis. The danger also lies with citizens, since disease can be transmitted to them, as has been done to hygiene workers in health institutions. If a needle used for blood or any other patient we catch has had hepatitis, the person slaughtered with the needle will also gain the disease. The only solution is to establish a system of medical waste management”, Corac explained.

He says that regarding medical waste, the chaotic situation is all over Kosovo, adding that there is no responsibility for this situation.

You can't point your finger at someone and say it's the guilty one. You can't tell anyone why there's no system of management of medical waste. Now it's been warned to open the warehouse in Savina Stana. It's a project for every praise. Previously, it was the warehouse at Baellaban, which was closed in 2011, and now it's 2018, and 7 years of medical waste and other wastes are dumped everywhere, where we can reach”, he said.

For Professor Corac, the only solution is to implement an industrial waste management project.

“should have a quality and medical management system. The management system is established, defined in each department people in charge of management with medical, technical and medical waste manager. And these two people then follow the chain to the source and so every ambulance we have someone loaded for medical waste. To accomplish this, it doesn't take much before”, it's precise by Professor Corac.

Otherwise, completion of work on building regional depot in “Savina Stanana” in northern Mitrovica, for which the EU has invested 5m euros is expected in September, while northern Mitrovica chairman Goran Rakiq has also warned a project to recycling waste in this depot, especially for dealing with medical waste.