OBJECTIVE To assess, within communities experiencing Ebola virus outbreaks, the risks associated with the disposal of human waste and to generate recommendations for mitigating such risks. METHODS A team with expertise in the Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points framework identified waste products from the care of individuals with Ebola virus disease and constructed, tested and confirme...

Coffee is one of the most popular and consumed beverages in the world, which leads to a high contents of solid residue known as spent coffee grounds (SCG). As is known, coffee beans contain several classes of health related chemicals, including phenolic compounds, melanoidins, diterpenes, xanthines and carotenoids which are associated with therapeutic and pharmaceutical effects, due to antimicr...

Although medical waste usually accounts for a small fraction of urban municipal waste, its proper disposal has been a challenging issue as it often contains infectious, radioactive, or hazardous waste. This article proposes a two-level hierarchical multicriteria decision model to address medical waste disposal method selection (MWDMS), where disposal methods are assessed against different crite...

The influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on health inequalities is widely known, but there is still poor understanding of the precise relationship between area-based socioeconomic conditions and neighborhood environmental quality. This study aimed to investigate the socioeconomic conditions which predict urban neighbourhood environmental quality. The results showed wide variation in levels o...

The Major Incident Hospital of the University Medical Centre of Utrecht has a longstanding history of preparing for the management of highly pathogenic and infectious organisms. An assessment of the hospital's preparations for an outbreak of viral hemorrhagic fever and its experience during admission of a patient with Ebola virus disease showed that the use of the buddy system, frequent trainin...

BACKGROUND Unsafe working practices, working environments, disposable waste products, and chemicals in clinical laboratories contribute to infectious and non-infectious hazards. Staffs, the community, and patients are less safe. Furthermore, such practices compromise the quality of laboratory services. We conducted a study to describe safety practices in public hospital laboratories of Oromia R...

BACKGROUND Phenotypic, culture-based methods for drug susceptibility testing (DST) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are relatively simple and may be particularly appropriate for resource-limited settings where tuberculosis (TB) is most prevalent. However, these methods can be slow and generate significant amounts of infectious waste. Low-cost digital imaging and a unique porous ceramic support for...