Enhancing Infection Control with Waste Management

Who would have thought that in 2020 infection control would become one of the most commonly search google terms across a global landscape. Where “sanitizing” your hands would become the norm in all social settings outside of a hospital, and where the cleanliness of a clinical environment would be escalated to one of the top risk management priorities of every patient care facility in the world.

Through this same infection control lens, we look at current medical waste management challenges in patient-care settings:

• Medical Waste Bins in patient rooms – who cleans the bins?
• Reg bag removal, manual cardbox box assembly, direct contact with disposed medical waste
• Hand “touch” of medical bin lids to open or close
• Punctured bags or cardboard boxes causing spillage in clinical areas
• Direct ground contamination with containers being moved between the loading dock and clinical areas

We need to break the chain of infection by eliminating medical waste “touches”