A/HRC/18/31 feasible, the best option is to return old pharmaceuticals/chemicals to the manufacturer for reuse of active ingredients or proper disposal. 12. Medical radioactive waste may be defined as radioactive waste arising from diagnostic, therapeutic and research applications in medicine. It includes spent radionuclide generators and spent sealed radiation sources, anatomical and biological waste from patients administered with radionuclides, and miscellaneous solid dry waste (for example, gloves, paper tissues and equipment parts) containing small amounts of radioactivity. The majority of radioactive waste generated by health-care establishments is classified as “lowlevel waste”. Most of the radioisotopes used in hospitals for medical diagnostic procedures and treatments are very short-lived, and in most cases the only treatment needed is segregation and storage for decay before further treatment to eliminate biological hazards and/or release into the environment. 13. In accordance with the mandate conferred on the Special Rapporteur by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 9/1, the present report focuses solely on medical waste that is of a hazardous or toxic nature. B. Current practices 14. In view of the significant risks that hazardous medical waste poses to human health and the environment, it should be segregated at source from non-risk medical waste and handled, labelled, packaged, collected, stored, transported and disposed of in a safe and environmentally sound way. However, a recent literature review shows that substantial public health challenges continue to exist in many developing countries with regard to the proper management and disposal of health-care waste.3 Not only is the amount of waste generated by health-care facilities increasing owing to the expansion of health-care systems and services; the situation is exacerbated by the lack of adequate technological and financial resources to ensure that health-care waste is properly managed and disposed of. 15. In many countries, medical waste continues to be mixed with general household waste and either disposed of in municipal waste facilities or dumped illegally. Although no comprehensive study is available to assess the amount of medical waste that is disposed of in municipal waste facilities, it appears that this is the main disposal route in low- to middle-income countries.4 Some types of health-care waste, such as used syringes and needles, are reused or recycled in many developing countries without any proper sterilization. 16. In response to immediate and pressing concerns about the spread of diseases caused by exposure to health-care waste, many developing countries have opted for the combustion or incineration of health-care waste as a disposal method. Some facilities use open burning, while others have installed small-scale medical waste incinerators to dispose of the waste they produce. The use of medical waste incinerators appears to be expanding rapidly in developing countries at the same time as it is being phased out in many industrialized countries for health and environmental reasons. Given the deleterious health threats from emissions and ash, incineration cannot be regarded as the best method of disposal of hazardous medical waste, and should only be employed as an interim method in developing countries, if other options, such as non-burn technologies, are not available.5 3 4 5 6 Harhay et al., “Health care waste management: a neglected and growing public health problem worldwide”, Tropical Medicine and International Health, vol. 14, No. 11 (November 2009). A recent country study on India showed that only 50 to 55 per cent of medical waste was segregated and handled in accordance with national legislation, while the remaining part was dumped with municipal solid wastes. See Indian Institute of Management, “Evaluation of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)”, February 2010, p. 42. World Health Organization, Safe health-care waste management, policy paper, 2004.