Medical waste ignored in Africa’s circular transition

From the newsletter

Egypt is in talks with the UNDP to expand their cooperation to include medical waste management. Central to the discussions is the development of a medical waste treatment complex, in the northeastern region, as the country looks to strengthen its health infrastructure and improve hazardous waste handling.

• According to WHO, medical waste makes up 15% of healthcare waste, a small fraction by volume but highly hazardous if mismanaged, posing serious health and environmental risks.

• Despite these risks, most healthcare waste strategies in Africa still focus on disposal rather than prevention, segregation or investment in cleaner circular treatment technologies.

More details

• Egypt’s Minister of Health and Population, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, met earlier this week with UNDP Resident Representative Alessandro Fracassetti to explore expanding their cooperation to include medical waste management. Central to the talks was a proposed treatment complex in Suez Governorate which is expected to serve as a national model for safe and modern waste handling.

• The announcement comes ahead of the Global Conference on Health, Population and Development, scheduled for November in Cairo where health systems resilience and sustainability will be on the agenda.

• Despite significant investments in healthcare access and infrastructure, medical waste remains a blind spot across Africa, untracked, underfunded and underregulated. This oversight presents major public health, environmental and economic challenges and represents a missed opportunity to advance circular innovation.

• The World Health Organization (WHO) defines medical waste as “waste generated by healthcare activities, ranging from used needles and syringes to soiled dressings, body parts, diagnostic samples, blood, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and radioactive materials.” These materials can be infectious, toxic, carcinogenic, flammable, corrosive or even explosive, qualifying them as among the most dangerous waste streams globally.

• Although medical waste makes up just 15% of the total waste produced in healthcare settings, its impact is disproportionately large. WHO notes that in low income countries, including most of Africa, facilities generate an average of 0.2 kilograms of hazardous healthcare waste per hospital bed per day, compared to 0.5 kilograms in high income countries. However, due to poor segregation practices, the true volume of hazardous waste is likely much higher.

• WHO and UNICEF have called for urgent action to improve healthcare waste services, particularly in fragile and low-resource settings like Africa. According to global estimates, only 25% of health facilities in these contexts meet basic waste management standards. This includes the safe segregation, treatment, and disposal of medical waste, essential for infection control and environmental safety.

• The consequences are serious and far reaching. Mismanaged healthcare waste can transmit harmful and drug resistant microorganisms to patients, health workers and surrounding communities.

• Leachate from open dumpsites can contaminate water sources, while the uncontrolled burning of plastics and chemicals releases dioxins and furans, highly toxic pollutants linked to cancer, reproductive disorders and respiratory disease. Beyond the immediate health risks, the environmental impacts, particularly the degradation of soil and water systems—can persist for decades.

• Several root causes contribute to the inadequate state of medical waste management in Africa. Many countries lack comprehensive legal frameworks or technical guidelines to govern the waste lifecycle. Even where policies exist, enforcement is often fragmented across institutions or chronically underfunded.

•  Awareness of the health risks associated with improper waste handling is low even among frontline healthcare workers. Training in waste segregation is rare and basic materials such as colour coded bins and sealed containers are frequently absent. Financial constraints further deepen the challenge with waste management often falling to the bottom of national and facility level health priorities.

• In Africa, while several countries have developed medical waste management strategies, these policies tend to focus narrowly on final disposal, typically through incineration or landfilling, rather than upstream interventions like segregation at source or downstream opportunities for recovery and safe reuse. This leaves little room for the adoption of circular approaches that could reduce health risks while also creating economic value.

• Yet this crisis also presents a clear opportunity. By embedding circular economy principles into medical waste systems, African countries can shift from reactive disposal to a model rooted in prevention, reuse and safe resource recovery. For example, proper segregation at the point of generation can ensure that only genuinely hazardous waste is incinerated while recyclable materials are separated and recovered. This not only reduces the volume of waste requiring high risk treatment but also enables safer lower cost recovery pathways.

• Investing in nonburn technologies like autoclaves or microwave disinfection can drastically reduce toxic emissions, aligning with WHO guidelines that discourage open burning and low temperature incineration due to their health and environmental hazards.Also, localised treatment hubs, supported through public private partnerships, can bring safer and more efficient solutions closer to healthcare facilities, particularly in underserved regions.

• At the same time, pharmaceutical takeback programmes and extended producer responsibility (EPR) models can relieve hospitals of some of their waste burdens while promoting accountability across the supply chain.

Our take

• If Africa is to keep pace with the growth of its healthcare systems and protect both human and environmental health, it must treat medical waste not as a side issue but as a core pillar of health system reform, environmental protection and circular economic development.

• With stronger regulation, targeted investment and clear political will, Africa can avoid a mounting health and environmental burden and position itself to lead in building cleaner, safer and more circular healthcare systems.

• Treating medical waste as a circular economy challenge, not just a health risk, could unlock new business models in waste recovery, treatment technologies and producer responsibility, turning a public burden into an economic opportunity.