Critical Review of Biomedical Waste Management for Future Pandemics: Pharmaceutical Perspective

Abstract

During the pandemic, biomedical waste (BMW) management was reported as a global problem. World Health Organization has also stressed that COVID-19 resulted in the production of tens of thousands of tons of BMW. It includes waste from hospitals, research laboratories, pharmaceutical industry, etc., and among them, pharmaceutical waste has a major effect on the ecosystem. It includes waste generated during diagnosis, research activities, immunization, and treatment, such as vials, bottles, gloves, masks, needles, expired/unused/spilled/contaminated drugs, radioactive material, pharmacological waste, etc. Timely and precise management of BMW is a vital issue, and the present manuscript aims to provide a comprehensive overview of BMW with a major focus on pharmaceutical waste, their types, points of entry, and its management using pyrolysis, nanotechnologies, etc. Available guidelines and challenges associated with the management technologies have been reviewed, and we have proposed a practical framework suggesting the role of government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry and expected outcomes from the suggested techniques in stepwise manner. Besides various developments in the pharmaceutical field, there is requirement to develop and implement environmentally friendly approaches for BMW disposal to benefit the community.