Labels and other identifiers, like batch numbers, had been “deliberately removed” from the mounds of medical waste recently found dumped along the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast, according to health investigators.
The toxic waste has now been collected from five places on a 25km stretch between Sigidi and Mtentu villages, reports Daily Maverick.
Five buckets of unknown medication have already been earmarked for destruction, as soon as other investigators have completed their probes.
Eastern Cape Department of Health investigators were unable to identify the medication in the five buckets being held at the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Hospital awaiting destruction.
“Due to fears of toxicity and the smell,” a pharmacist from the department that led the meeting wrote in his report, “the buckets will be stored at the hospital for inspection by interested parties.”
They will be weighed and a plan made to dispose of them next week if nobody claims them.
Health Department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the Alfred Nzo municipality has contracted Compass Waste Management to prepare for their disposal.
The report was produced after a meeting between the department and the leaders of the Amadiba Community, which first sounded the alarm over the extensive spill of medicine along a stretch of the coastline.
Kupelo confirmed the meeting, on 12 February, and said there was no evidence linking the department with the drugs. Nor, he added, was there “evidence to confirm if the medicines were expired or not, due to labels, batch numbers and expiry dates having been intentionally removed”.
The report said the drugs had been identified, but “these are medications only available in the private sector”.
Community leaders confirmed the meeting but said their understanding was that some of the discarded pharmaceuticals were used by both the private and the public sectors.
“The topic under discussion was the thousands of medical containers that started to arrive with garbage floods, at the end of January. The Mbizana part of the Wild Coast is affected, all the way down to Mkhambathi Nature Reserve,” said a statement from the Amadiba Community.
“In the delegation from Alfred Nzo region were also experts and leading medical staff from St Patricks and Greenville Hospitals in Mbizana. The officials commended the community and the ACC for organising a clean-up since 29 January.
“They had never seen such an initiative. But they also warned that the work is risky. Some of the medicines are dangerous. As ACC, we took the warning seriously.”
Community leaders said they were given protective gear but after the meeting, they continued collecting more garbage north of the Mnyameni River, worried that the drugs might be consumed by curious children or livestock on the beaches.
“It shouldn’t be a community organising the clean-up alone. But some things can’t wait. Medical waste is still washing up on to the beaches,” they said
“We urge the provincial government to order the insourcing of hazardous waste collection.”
Currently, the department outsources medical waste disposal to for-profit companies.
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