There are many safety precautions that hospitals must consider when treating Ebola patients. Everyone who remotely comes in contact with the person must be wearing gowns, masks, gloves and booties. So, hopefully those people are protected, but what happens to those items when they take them off?
Many more items must be destroyed as well, like sheets, curtains, towels, equipment, etc. There is no room for error with this, but when each Ebola patient will generate eight 55-gallon barrels of medical waste each day, according to the LA Times, this is a serious potential problem for hospitals. It’s not just about preventing spread of the disease, it’s about safe and legal waste-management.
The CDC is recommending autoclaving (incinerating) the materials, but that is prohibited in at least 8 states. California is one of them, and they are currently trying to find solutions.
“These are some pretty big issues and they need some quick attention,” Jennifer Bayer, spokeswoman for the Hospital Assn. of Southern California told the LA Times.”We fully expect that it’s coming our way. Not to create any sort of scare, but just given the makeup of our population and the hub that we are, it’s very likely.”
Stericycle Inc., the nation’s largest medical waste disposal company, won’t be taking in any Ebola-contaminated waste in St. Louis, Mo. because a ban was placed by the state attorney general. So clearly if this becomes a much bigger issue than it is now, some solutions need to be put in place.
Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council believes some state restrictions concerning incinerating will likely be lifted, should it come to that.
Surely some startups like these are thinking about this issue right now (from a preventative perspective):
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
[Hospital Ebola ward image from flickr user CDC Global]
