The United Nations Development Programme and Asian Development Bank signed an agreement to allocate additional $128 thousand to support national efforts to respond to the COVID-19.  The initiative aims at strengthening national public health emergency preparedness, namely medical waste management system in hospitals.

With the onset of COVID-19 pandemic the volume of medical waste has sharply increased. This requires additional measures on waste management improvement in hospitals. Medical waste, including disposable items, such as gloves, masks, etc. should be properly handled and disposed immediately in clinics. This will prevent the spread of infection outside of hospitals and decrease the infection cases among health workers.

The project strives to achieve the followings outcomes:

·        Designing standard operation procedures for health workers on medical waste management - proper collection, sorting, transportation, disposal and monitoring of medical waste in hospitals.

·        Developing effective healthcare waste management database: establishment of software program with an embedded healthcare waste treatment database.

·        Training health workers to respond to the pandemic through proper handling, storage, and treatment of medical waste, including transportation of the medical waste contaminated with COVID-19.

In addition to these outcomes, it is also planned to deliver an autoclave - a special equipment for medical waste disposal - to a new hospital in Nur-Sultan city.