**7. Conclusion**

Management of healthcare waste should be highly prioritized in healthcare emergencies. Recent healthcare emergencies like the Ebola outbreak in west Africa and now the covid 19 pandemic have improved awareness and need to invest in innovative ways of managing waste. The EBV outbreak also highlighted the risks associated with traditional/cultural norms of burying dead bodies. This was extended to covid 19 as people in full PPE gear could be seen burying dead bodies in most countries. Lessons learnt in the different types of healthcare emergencies are very important for the next emergency.

Risk assessment has become a very important concept in the management of biosafety issues (including waste management). It is important to have a formal way of anticipating for potential exposures and making sure that the potential risks of exposure are removed from the from the facility. If systematically done in different emergencies it can adequately prevent exposures. Involvement of everyone who has a role to play in waste management significantly improves its effectiveness.

Training of healthcare workers is of paramount importance. in some cases, due to the nature of the emergency it might be important to reorient people on how the waste is going to be managed. Different emergencies present different risks and it Is important to customize the training on order to make sure that it is effective. Consideration of the different levels of employees is key if there is to be prevention of exposures. The EBV out breaks restricted orderlies from doing many duties as the danger of exposure increased especially from dead bodies. This coupled with the expensive PPE meant that the healthcare professionals had to be heavily involved. Use of appropriate technical language is key to making use that there is transfer of usable skills. Additionally evaluation of the trainings in this case need to be done to make sure that people understand what they have been taught. A retraining can be organized in case people did not fully understand.

The sudden increase in healthcare waste generation or generation of healthcare waste in non-healthcare settings means there is need to mobile resources to manage the waste. In high income settings alternatives can include use of mobile incinerators to completement the onsite incinerators or to take care of healthcare waste in places where it is not possible to have incinerators like camps, quarantine centers

#### *Management of Healthcare Waste in Healthcare Emergencies DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99884*

and other non-healthcare settings. The reaction of the Chinese to the covid 19 pandemic has highlighted innovative ways of managing waste like the mobile incinerators that can be deployed to the places where the waste is being generated [8].

On the other hand, in low resource settings transitional methods can be applied as an interim measure as systems and resources are being put together to have more advanced technologies in place. The selection of the transitional methods needs to be made on the basis of adaptability to the setting. The methods should be readily available and adaptable with a known efficacy reducing the risk to public health by controlling the spread of infections and hazardous chemicals through healthcare waste. Technical options on the management of healthcare waste need be presented in the process of making a choice based on the resources that are available.

Expired drugs need to be disposed of as per the regulations of the country but incineration is the most common practice in most countries. Other classes of drugs are described as high risk and their disposal need to be monitored.

Proper healthcare waste management is imperative to preventing further infections that might not be part of the original healthcare emergency. Planning to manage waste is a process that requires information before implementation. Resource availability is key as some of the waster might require specific ways to manage it. The impending ban on mercury-based measuring instruments in healthcare will reduce the risks involved with their breakage in instruments like thermometers and sphygmomanometers. Risk assessments should inform all the waste management activities and should be carried out with everyone in mind.
