Medical Waste Management at Upazila Level in Bangladesh

The study was conducted at healthcare establishments of Abhaynagar Upazila of Jessore District in Bangladesh to quantify amount of medical waste (MW) generated from the medical services; determine physical composition of MW; find out the correlation of waste quantity with relevant factors; identify problems and develop future guideline regarding management. The average waste generation rate was 37.11 kg/hospital, 1.56 kg/bed/day, and 1.90 kg/patient/day. The hazardous waste was recorded 9.71%, whereas, non-hazardous waste 90.29%. MW consisted eight categories of waste materials with vegetable/food being the largest component (74%), and varied significantly (p?0.05) among other hospitals surveyed. The quantity of MW was positively correlated with the number of occupied beds (R2=0.898, P?0.05) and with the number of patients (R=0.785, P?0.05). Separate legislation must be formulated to address the issue of medical waste management as a separate environmental mandate and regular supervision of them are very much necessary.