Gov’t to conduct 1st nationwide survey on household medical waste (Japan)
From Kyodo News

Monday January 29, 5:43 AM
Gov’t to conduct 1st nationwide survey on household medical waste
(Kyodo) _ The Environment Ministry will soon begin a nationwide survey for the first time to grasp how local governments are dealing with sharply increasing household medical waste in line with rising home-care patients, according to ministry officials.
Local authorities are in charge of household medical waste, but many of them are not actually collecting and disposing of such waste due to concerns over becoming infected through being stuck by needles or other haphazard accidents, thus troubling home-case patients and their families.

Against this backdrop, the ministry intends to get a grasp of the nationwide situation through the survey and use it to come up with effective measures, the officials said.

The ministry will soon send out survey sheets to local authorities, and collect them as early as late February to compile a report by the end of the current fiscal year ending March 31, they said.

The survey will include determining whether local authorities are collecting household medical waste, how uncollected household medical waste is being dealt with, and how local authorities are cooperating with local medical societies and related bodies to solve such disposal problems.

Medical supplies subject to the survey will involve syringe needles, syringe barrels, plastic bags used for blood infusion and other purposes, tubes and catheters, cottons and gauzes.

The number of home-care patients in 2003 posted a 2.6-fold increase from 10 years ago to 710,000 cases and has since been on the increase, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

The uptrend reflects the government’s policy of promoting home-care medical treatments in a bid to curb ballooning fiscal burdens on medical-care expenses.