Management of pharmaceutical waste in hospitals in Serbia – challenges and the potential for improvement

Abstract

Background: Left over medication widely used in hospitals for the treatment of various diseases including malignant illnesses, stand to represent a hazardous form of healthcare waste. According to regulations in the Republic of Serbia dating back to 2009, all healthcare facilities are obligated to separate, label and safely put away said leftover medication, i.e. forward it to authorised operators in order to be securely shipped and properly taken care of abroad. Pharmaceutical waste can lead to dire consequences on a patient's or medical employee's health, as well as cause simultaneous damage to the environment, both work and not. The main aim of this research is the assessment of the state of Serbian hospitals as is, from the perspective of dealing with pharmaceutical waste. Also, the research's objective is to examine the factors that affect the way healthcare waste is handled and the respectful aftermath of their alterations in healthcare institutions. Methods: For the realization of this survey, a special questionnaire was developed, concocted with regard to the margins set out by WHO, in order to promptly assess the management of healthcare waste in hospitals, which had beforehand been pretested. The research was carried out as a cross-sectional study of the representative hospital sample of the secondary and tertiary level of healthcare facilities in the public domain, in November 2014. Results: The questionnaire was completed by 60 hospitals, which typifies a representative number of said facilities in the Republic of Serbia and which covers more than 85% of inpatient capacity within the public sector's network of healthcare hospitals defined by the Bylaw (referred to as the Network of healthcare facilities in Serbia). Conclusion: Tertiary level hospitals, meaning clinical centres, clinicalmedical centres and institutes that offer highly specialized healthcare services and have an admittedly larger number of hospital beds, have a more evolved system of sorting pharmaceutical waste and do away with grander amounts of it on a yearly basis. Establishing a safe and law-abiding management of pharmaceutical waste in hospitals will come to wholly enhance the management of hazardous waste in the healthcare system.

Pharmaceuticals wastage and pharmaceuticals waste management in public health facilities of Dessie town, North East Ethiopia

“…This study revealed that the pharmaceutical wastage rate of health centers was nearly twofold higher than hospitals. This was in line with the study conducted in Serbia where tertiary healthcare level hospitals produced statistically significantly larger quantities of healthcare waste than secondary level hospitals [ 36 ]. The differences in wastage rate across various studies might be due to differences in duration of the study, assessed types, number and characteristics of health facilities, number of items, and inflation of the currency.…”

Resíduo Hospitalar E Seu Impacto: Uma Revisão Da Literatura

“…GARCÍA-UBAQUE; ZAFRA-MEJÍA, TRAN et al, 2019;FARROKHI et al, 2016;ANOZIE, 2017;AHMAD et al, 2019;URIOSTE et al, 2018;MARCZAK, 2016;AUGUSTIN et al, 2016;FARZADKIA et al, 2018;JOVANOVIĆ et al, 2016;GAO et al, 2018;KRISHNAN;DEVAMANI;JAYALAKSHMI, 2015;OLIVEIRA;VIANA;CASTAÑON, 2018;PRAYITNO et al, 2018;THANH et al, 2016;SREEREMYA;RAJIV, 2017;NOGUEIRA et al, 2018;KUCHIBANDA;MAYO, 2015;YOUSEFI;AVAK ROSTAMI, 2017;NEVEU C;MATUS C, 2007;AL-MOMANI et al, 2019;PACHAURI et al, 2019;AFOLABI et al, 2018;DEWI et al, 2019;NJUANGANG;LIYANAGE;AKINTOYE, 2018;KIM et al, 2018;MUKHAIBER, 2017;JASEM;JUMAHA;GHAWI, 2018;GARIBALDI et al, 2017;NAMBURAR et al, 2018).…”

Potential for industrial ecology to support healthcare sustainability: Scoping review of a fragmented literature and conceptual framework for future research

“…With the notable exception of healthcare waste management (25% ± 6.8 percentage points), “supporting” activities are also understudied. The literature on healthcare waste management includes, but is not limited to, reviews of legal and regulatory requirements (Takatsuki, ; Haylamicheal & Desalegne, ; Botelho, ), surveys and case studies of healthcare waste management attitudes and practices (Idowu, Alo, Atherton, & Al Khaddar, ; Ul Rahman, Hameed, Shahjehan, Ayyaz, & Kha et al., ; Askarian, Vakili, & Kabir, ; Aseweh Abor & Bouwer, ; Saad, ; Thiel, Duncan, & Woods, ; Jovanović, Manojlović, Jovanović, Matić, & Đonović, ; Gupta et al., ), waste audits (Patwary et al., ; Voudrias, Goudakou, Kermenidou, & Softa, ; Suwannee, ; Komilis, Brat, Makary, ; Saad, ; Majid & Umrani, ; Patil & Pokhrel, ), and toxicological studies of healthcare wastes (Gupta, Mathur, Bhatnagar, Nagar, & Srivastava, ). The evident focus on waste management probably reflects the visibility of this issue, the large volumes of waste generated in healthcare services (e.g., the US healthcare sector generates about 1.7 million tons of solid waste annually [United States Environmental Protection Agency, ]), and the complex legal and regulatory aspects related to medical waste.…”