The overall objective of this full size GEF funded project, implemented by UNDP in partnership with WHO and the NGO Health Care Without Harm, is to implement best environmental practices and introduce non-incineration healthcare waste treatment technologies and mercury-free medical devices in four Sub-Saharan African countries (Ghana, Madagascar, Tanzania and Zambia) to reduce harmful releases from the health sector. In each of these four countries, the generation of healthcare waste (HCW) is rapidly increasing. Sub-Saharan countries face particular challenges in dealing with increasing HCW quantities, because HCW treatment technologies that meet international guidelines and fit local circumstances, are simply not available at market prices that facilities and governments can afford. As a result, countries most often opt for low technology incinerators, which result in significant releases of unintentional persistent organic pollutants (UPOPs). Such pollutants are considered to be among the most harmful, persistent, and bio-accumulative global pollutants in the world and therefore controlled under the Stockholm Convention on POPs. Similarly, Sub-Saharan countries face challenges in handling products and wastes containing mercury. Mercury, one of the world's most ubiquitous heavy metal neurotoxicants, has been an integral part of many medical devices such as thermometers and sphygmomanometers. When these devices break or leak with regularity, they add to the global burden of mercury in the environment and expose health care workers to the acute effects of the metal itself. Considering the harmful effect of mercury, the phase-out of such devices by 2020 is anticipated under the recently adopted Minamata Convention.