An Investigation on Hospital Solid Waste Management in Iran

Abstract

The integrated hospital solid waste management emphasizes the need to conduct a survey based on a standardized method that equally be analyzed at national level. This study aimed to test the usability of a national tool to do integration data analysis of hospital waste management status. Then, a typical study was conducted in Karaj hospitals. Also, critical analysis of hospital's solid waste management aspects was done, and shortcomings in the aspects were identified. The pilot study results showed that the daily per capita waste generations were reported to be 4.2 +/- 0.49 kg/available bed, 5.8 +/- 0.63 kg/occupied bed, and 10.3 +/- 0.9 kg/inpatient. The names of the hospitals were omitted when they were named from H-1 to H-8. So the highest and lowest daily waste generation rate were 5.5 +/- 0.35 and 2.6 +/- 0.78 kg/available bed in H-7 and H-3 hospitals, respectively. In this study, total infectious wastes per capita were reported to be 2.3 +/- 0.39 kg/available bed/day, 3 +/- 0.5 kg/occupied bed/day and 5.2 +/- 0.84 kg/inpatient/day. Furthermore, the averages per capita of total general waste were 2 +/- 0.4 kg/available bed/day, 2.8 +/- 0.51 kg/occupied bed/day and 5.1 +/- 0.8 kg/inpatient/day. Analysis of the Karaj hospital waste management status showed statue of hospital waste management in 88 of hospitals were ranked moderate when others were achieved to be poor by 12. The hospital waste management had been evaluated poor in term of collection, transportation and manpower aspects, moderate in the separation and temporary storage aspects and good in the disposal aspect. It was also found that the MOHME tool is appropriate tool to investigate the status of waste management in hospitals.