PROBLEMS IN MEDICAL WASTE DISPOSAL IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION: STATE-OF-THE-ART AND SOLUTION PROSPECTS

The rapid pace of urbanization and the modern development of public health in our country strongly pose a problem for us to neutralize, utilize, and bury medical waste, which is under current conditions considered as an important epidemiological and environmental component of national security. Since 2005, the amount of resulting medical waste in the Russian Federation has virtually tripled and amounted to over 1.8 million tons (about 1.5% of the total volume of production and consumption wastes). A significant portion (more than 30%) of medical waste is highly epidemiologically dangerous, poses a real risk for the prevalence of communicable diseases, and requires various approaches for their neutralization in terms of epidemiological and environment safety. By taking into account the progressive pace of modern health care development and the analysis of this problem in foreign countries, the amount of medical waste will increase progressively in the Russian Federation in the coming years. The important promising goals to solve this problem in the Russian Federation will be: to improve the legislative regulation of the problem; to elaborate federal, regional, and municipal targeted programs for safe centralized medical waste disposal in the large cities and regions of Russia; to carry out mandatory testing and examinations of new equipment and machinery for medical waste neutralization at special and accredited institutions; to license medical waste disposal activity; to make compulsory medical waste disposal education activity, by taking into consideration the current regulatory framework, international experience, and the current epidemic situation.

epidemiology, medical waste