Used facemasks should be considered as medical waste and should be treated as such, the founder of Child Health Environment and Safety Trust (CHEST), and environmental health expert, Professor Godson Ana, has said.
He spoke at a recent workshop for secondary school students in Ibadan on the sanitary management of facemasks. Professor Ana noted that there is a safe and hygienic way to manage the use of facemasks, seeing that the disposal of facemasks has become indiscriminate.
“Facemasks are a new kind waste and should be packaged and separated as medical waste and incinerated,” he said.
Also speaking, Mrs Margaret Ana, a facilitator at the event and also of CHEST, stated that wearing of facemasks was made mandatory since the advent of the covid-19 pandemic.
She said that the workshop was targeted at students to give them proper knowledge of how to properly wear facemasks, wash the reusable ones and properly dispose them.
She stated that improper disposal of facemasks could lead to the virus spreading to the environment affecting pets and clogging drainages, among other adverse effects.
Students of the International Secondary School (ISI), Ibadan and Oritamefa Baptist Model School, Total Garden, Ibadan, attended the workshop.
Adewumi Owoade, Vice Principal of Oritamefa Baptist Model School, lauded the initiators of the workshop, saying it provided useful information to sanitise the environment and keep it free of covid-19. He expressed the hope that the students would share their new knowledge with their peers and family.
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