Sierra Leone News: Garbage sites a hazard to health

Business

On Thursday 23 August 2018, a man died while scavenging for metals below the bomeh at Kissy Road. The heavy rains that morning triggered a “garbage-slide” and a section of the 25-meter wall of trash buried the man. As the rainy season continues, more disasters are likely to happen at Freetown’s largest dump site. Aside from the risk of falling trash, blockages that clog up the already-broken culverts can cause flooding upstream near Granville Brook. The waste is most devastating, however, by how it heavily contributes to the large amount of deadly diseases that affect thousands of people living in and around the city’s dump sites. “We get salmonella bacteria patients on a daily basis,” Sawa Banya, the head of outpatient procedures at Connaught Hospital, said. “Hepatitis A and E cases are also common. HIV is relatively prominent. Scabies and measles are frequent… People get sick from breathing in the smoke of the burning trash.” Medical personnel and the heads of government departments know about the health problems of the people that live in the areas around Freetown’s dump sites. People come into the city’s largest medical center, Connaught Hospital, and other neighborhood clinics with symptoms that stem from living in and downstream of the dump sites. At home, people bathe themselves in water that runs through litter-packed pipes, scavenge for metals, and grow vegetables on the trash-infested soil. Some even drink the water. “You don’t have to do research to see that it’s an unhealthy lifestyle,” Ansumana Sillah, the director of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, said. Sierra Leone’s high unemployment has led people to resort to informal ways of making an income. Some go to the “bomehs” to sift through the garbage and collect metals that can be sold on the street. Wading up to their thighs in the waste-heavy river, they pay little attention to the fact that the garbage was combined with hazardous industrial waste and contaminated water. The trash at the ‘bomehs’ is not sorted in any way and many of the places that produce hazardous waste—such as hospitals, where up to 30% of waste is infectious—don’t properly separate their trash. Once the trash is collected, waste like syringes and pathologist gloves mix with car batteries and animal carcasses in the same ecosystem, waiting for someone to stick a limb into the garbage. Even dead bodies and truckloads of septic waste have been dumped at the sites, where people construct living spaces out of wood and zinc. According to a report published by EuropeAid in 2014, there is a correlation between epidemic outbreaks such as malaria and cholera and poor and unsustainable environmental sanitization of living spaces. The report stated, “Sierra Leone recorded greater incidences in the neighbourhoods closer to the solid-waste dump sites than in other areas”. Masses of people seek help for diarrheal diseases that come from bacteria that are present in these areas. Even if they get medical assistance, a return to unhealthy living conditions often means more sickness. The people living in these sites check off most traits that the World Health Organization (WHO) identifies as causes, such as malnutrition, close proximity to feaces, and poor food and water storage. WHO notes that young people who are malnourished (usually from low-income households), have impaired immunity and are most at risk of life-threatening diarrhea. This coincides with the demographic living in the conditions in and around the bomehs. The reason they go there is because they cannot afford to live elsewhere. It’s why the two men who perished were risking their lives to look for metals in disease-infested water that flowed below a wall of garbage that was at risk of collapse. Diarrheal diseases can also be caused by water that is contaminated with human and animal waste, as well as bacteria that grows in the stagnant water conditions the waste sits in at the dumps. Personal hygiene is important to combat diarrhea, as is the safe storage of water and food. Even seafood that has lived in a polluted environment—like Cline Bay, where the trash flows to—can transmit diarrhea. The pigs, rats, and other vectors that live in the area also contribute to the spread. According to the WHO, diarrheal disease was the top cause of death in Sierra Leone in 2012. Varying reports have it within the top 3 killers in more recent studies. In Freetown’s other main dump site at Kingtom, people live in the same conditions. There, the wall of trash might be smaller, but the amount of trash burning is likely larger than at the Kissy bomeh. Burning trash can cause severe problems for humans. Amongst other effects, breathing in the smoke’s harmful pollutants can harm lungs and cause respiratory tract infections, another top killer in Sierra Leone. JR/3/9/18 By Jack Russillo Wednesday September 05, 2018.

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