A mass of pill bottles and unopened condoms have been discovered on Twini beach during a clean-up by the Toti Saints, the local group that falls under the banner ‘Army Saints’.
The local group of environmental volunteers has been hard at work for the past three weeks to clean up debris that washed up on the beach after floods breached the river last month.
“While we were cleaning the beach we came across hundreds if not thousands of sealed, unused condoms,” said Army Saints founder, Shaun Callaghan. “These were not old stock as most have expiry dates up to 2020.
We also found hundreds of pill bottles, some still sealed. When we opened the sealed bottles, we found pink pills stamped with ‘M171’. This is an anti-retroviral pill. There were other tablet bottles as well. One had a label on it, which pointed to the Isipingo Municipality Clinic. All the condoms were Health Department issue, which also pointed back to the clinic.”
Investigations are ongoing to find the source of the pharmaceutical waste that washed up on a number of eThekwini beaches following the heavy rains.
This includes an investigation into the origins of the pills and condoms found on Twini beach after the Sun informed the municipality of the discovery on Monday, 30 May.
“Officials from the relevant units conducted a site visit on Tuesday, 31 May and found empty bottles with no labels on them. Therefore the municipality was unable to trace the source of the waste found,” said eThekwini head of communications, Tozi Mthethwa.
“Further reports received indicate that an unknown volunteer group that found the medical waste decided to take the waste to the media house. When the municipality requested for the details of the volunteer group in order to investigate the matter further, we were informed that they would like to remain anonymous.”
An environmental health services manager collected a sample of the pill bottles and condoms from the Sun’s offices on Wednesday morning.
“The relevant unit has begun cleaning up the area where the empty bottles were found and this will take up to a maximum of three days,” said Mthethwa.
“The city appreciates the efforts of all volunteers and community groups and is happy to supply safe equipment for the teams to work without putting themselves at risk. We urge volunteers and community groups to contact the city should they come into contact with any medical waste as their safety is of paramount importance to us.”
Residents who find dumped medical waste are encouraged to call the City Health Unit on 031-311-3535.
Clean up campaigns to clear eThekweni beaches of the waste are still underway and will continue until all it has been completely cleared. Deputy city manager for community and emergency services, Dr Musa Gumede said investigations are still ongoing regarding the source of the waste.
“We cannot speculate where it came from but it is clear it was not dumped on the beach, it came from the rivers. We do not believe it was a big pharmaceutical waste company, hospital or clinic that dumped this waste as we did not find items such as used syringes among the debris. There are a few possibilities regarding the source of the waste which we are still investigating,” he said.
Toti Saints paid unemployed people to help with the clean-up of Twini beach and over 1,000 refuse bags were filled when work was finally completed on Monday, 30 May.
The Saints were incensed when these employees were blamed by municipal officials for lighting fires on the beach to burn the debris. “This doesn’t make sense as I pay the workers per bag they fill so why would they burn the debris and lose out on payment?” questioned Shaun. “We have photos and eyewitness accounts of municipal workers burning the rubbish.
I have no idea why they want to shift blame onto us, but all we can do is carry on with the work and get the beach clean. We don’t have time for petty fights and lies.
We thank Bongani Nzama from the parks department who have worked tirelessly, even on their days off, to help us clean up the beach,” said Shaun.
Editor’s Note:
The Sun has had a request from the health authority for information about how people who have come across this medical waste, have disposed of it. Please let us know if you have any of it in your possession. This info may assist in the correct, environmentally-sensitive disposal methods being used to deal with it responsibly.
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