ID: 1872
Presenting Author: Min Ji Sohn
Session: 759 - Railroading the Assessment of Health and Social Valued Components in Impact Assessment
Status: pending
Lessons from managing medical waste in an COVID-19 response project in Eastern Africa, showing how practical ESF implementation restored safe waste treatment and improved community health management.
The COVID-19 Emergency Response Project in Eastern Africa presented a critical challenge in managing medical waste generated by large-scale procurement of healthcare materials. The World Bank-funded project, rated as Substantial environmental risk, required strict adherence to the World Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework. While early implementation showed satisfactory environmental performance, in-person supervision missions revealed severe accumulation of hazardous medical waste caused by malfunctioning incinerators, inadequate maintenance, and fuel shortages. The project undertook a series of corrective actions, redirecting waste to operational facilities, introducing continuous maintenance contracts, developing site-specific standard operating procedures, conducting operator training, allocating project funds for diesel supply, and instituting quantitative waste tracking. These interventions successfully restored compliance and operational functionality, reducing waste volumes significantly within months. The experience highlights critical lessons on early assessment of treatment infrastructure, continuous operator capacity-building, and ensuring flexibility in project financing for waste management during health crises. These insights underscore the importance of embedding sustainable health-care waste management systems in future emergency operations to safeguard community health and environmental integrity.
Min Ji Sohn is an Environmental Specialist at the World Bank focusing on implementing the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) across health, water, and energy projects.