Report: Treatment of medical waste in Nišava and Toplica districts, Serbia

Abstract

If there are no clearly defined management procedures, medical waste may represent a source of serious health hazards. Medical waste management was evaluated at the three hospitals in the Nisava and Toplica district, in Serbia. All the stages of existing waste management (segregation, collection, storage, transportation and disposal of waste) were examined by interviewing the personnel involved in the management of waste. The generated waste was a mixture of hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The study found that waste management performance in this district was poor and that there were problems in every stage of management. The results indicate that the waste generation rate was 1.92 kg bed(-1) day(-1) and consisted of 98.7% general waste and 1.3% sharps. Inappropriate segregation practices were the biggest problem and led to increased quantities of general waste. There were no specific regulations for the segregation of the medical waste. None of the surveyed hospitals have a system to refine wastewater and there were no training courses about hospital waste management.

Hospital Workers' Awareness of Health and Environmental Impacts of Poor Clinical Waste Disposal in the Northwest Region of Cameroon

“…All respondents were issued the same questionnaire irrespective of job experience and level of education. Data analysis was conducted with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v. 15.0) and we report results in percentages at 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).…”

A pilot survey about waste management in European hospitals: focusing on electrical and electronic equipment

“…Electrical and electronic appliances like medical devices are disposed after a certain time and need an appropriate method of treatment (Commission of the European Communities 2008; Stanković et al 2008). As already stated, inappropriate waste treatment has a negative impact on the environment and human health and, besides its impact on human health, waste treatment causes high economic costs (Bencko et al 2003; Commission of the European Communities 2008).…”

“…Inadequately treated waste, including waste from electrical and electronic equipment, particularly represents a risk for the environment and human health. This potential health risk underlines the need of overall agreed strategies regulating the handling of waste in Europe (Ramesh Babu et al 2007; Commission of the European Communities 2008; Stanković et al 2008;Sinha-Khetriwal et al 2005;Del Cimmuto et al 2010). …”

Effects of an incinerator project on a healthcare-waste management system

“…Previous studies have described the HCW management system in hospitals in various countries (Danchaivijitr et al, 2005;Gai and Kuroiwa, 2009;Jang et al, 2006;Mbongwe et al, 2008;Sawalem et al, 2009;Stankovic et al, 2008;Taghipour and Mosaferi, 2009). The present study investigated the effects of a new central incineration plant on the HCRW management system in terms of HCRW handlers, HCRW management process and cost of disposal.…”