This document highlights the key aspects of safe health-care waste management to guide policy-makers, practitioners and facility managers to provide services in health-care facilities. It is based on the comprehensive and detailed WHO handbook Safe management of wastes from health-care activities. The report is part of the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) and looks at the broader water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and infection prevention and control (IPC) efforts, safe management of health-care waste reduce health-care-related infections.

The study includes health-care waste categories and risks, waste storage requirements, wastewater management, among others and is in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), mainly SDG 3 on health, SDG 6 on safely managed water and sanitation, as well as SDG 12 on sustainable consumption and production.