Global biomedical waste management issues and practices

Abstract

Biomedicalwaste is a special type of waste which carries high potential of infectionand injury. Hospital waste management means the management of waste produced by hospitals using techniques that will check the spread of diseases through hospital waste. This study was conducted to examine healthcarewaste management practices in different hospitals. The related data has been collected from various international journals, books and websites. The data is analyzed by finding biomedical waste management issues and challenges around the world by gap analysis. Hospital waste generation, segregation, collection, transportation anddisposal practices were not in accordance with standard guidelines. The average waste generation in most of the hospitals was almost equivalent to other under developed countries but less than that of developed countries. Conclusions: The hospital waste in the majority of hospitals was mismanaged. No properhospital waste management plan existed has been done except at few hospitals.In this research the analysis of current biomedical wastes management, and some steps for management of healthcare is proposed.