Medical waste management system in Dhaka city corporation: South, Bangladesh

Abstract

The study has designed to assess the collection, handling, storage, and treatment and disposal system in healthcare providing organizations of the Dhaka South City Corporation area. Medical waste is dangerous because of its hazardous contamination, which may responsible for dreadful diseases like hepatitis B and HIV/AIDS. It poses serious threats to environmental health, requires specific treatment and management prior to its final disposal. The problem is mainly taking worse in Dhaka South City Corporation area for the high generation of waste from adequate number of hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centers and small healthcare centers. Although medical waste presents a high risk to doctors, nurses, technicians, sweepers, visitors, patients and general public due to its inadequate waste management practices. This study has been conducted to achieve the present situation of medical waste management system in Dhaka City Corporation: South, Bangladesh, to find out the sources, types and current amount of generated wastes and to assess the existing waste management practices including collection, storage, treatment and disposal in this area. The methodology of the study is includes empirical field observation and field level primary data collection through inventory, secondary data collection from published and unpublished sources, questionnaire survey and formal and informal interviews. This study was carried out in the twenty different healthcare establishment in Dhaka South City Corporation area. The field observation with questionnaire survey was implemented to collect latest information from 104 different respondents such as medical staffs, technicians and waste handlers/workers. All the obtained data has been analyzed by SPSS software (Version-16) and related statistical test also has been used to quantify data for making result. A laboratory analysis has been done to investigate the impact of medical waste. The location map of study area has been created by Arc GIS 10.1 version. This study tried to obtained the current information about surveyed healthcare establishments and shows that the surveyed all healthcare establishments generate total 8425 kgs waste of which about 6869 kgs non-hazardous and 1556 kgs hazardous and the average waste generation rate from all healthcare establishment. The study assess that, there was a lack of dedicated waste management system in all level. Lack of proper collection and segregation practices, storage facilities, proper treatment and disposal methods, trained waste handler, safely transportation and absence of plan, policy, lows and regulation are responsible for this poor management of medical waste. It is evident from the overall study that all types of surveyed healthcare establishments of Dhaka South City Corporation need to undertake some essential strategies such as a good trained waste management team with a dedicated budget, formulation of written plan, policy and guideline document for best management practices, segregation, packaging, labeling and marking with appropriate manner, proper storage system, ensure protective clothing and hygiene practices, ensure cost effective available treatment and disposal technologies for sound management etc. which may be responsible to achieve an efficient medical waste management system for all healthcare establishments in this area.