A Study on Health Care Waste Management in Some Selected Hospitals of
Dhaka City

Nusrat Rezwana Binte Razzak[1], Subrata Chowdhury[2] , Farhana Chowdhury[3]
Page No. 161-168

This study reviews the current situation of health care waste management (HCWM) and practices
in Dhaka. The aim of the study is to investigate the present condition of hazardous waste
generation, sources, types, in-house management, treatment facilities and final disposal pattern.
The analysis has also assessed the application of different technological methods for the
improvement of present situation with a view to evolve an efficient and improved medical waste
management in Dhaka city. The methodology for this study includes empirical field observation and
field level data collection through inventory, questionnaire survey, interviews and focus group
discussion. The relevant secondary data for this project have been mainly collected from the
published and unpublished sources. The study reveals that 80.77% of total HCW are non-infectious
and the rest 19.23% are infectious wastes. The average waste generation rate for the surveyed
health care establishments is 2.63 kg/bed/day. In some hospitals and health care establishments',
the waste disposal practice has been found to be quite unsafe, and both clinical and non-clinical
wastes have been found to be thrown together. A variety of methods have been observed in the study
areas for disposal of the wastes including burning, burial, selling, dumping, and removal by
municipal bins. The knowledge level of hospital staffs on the harmful impacts of improper waste
disposal is not satisfactory in all cases. Some cleaners are found mishandling the generated wastes.
They segregated the used sharps instruments (mainly the syringe-needles), saline bags, blood bags
and test tubes and non-hazardous wastes for sale (resale) or reuse. There is an urgent need for
raising awareness and education on medical waste issues. Proper waste management strategy
considering all the stakeholders is recommended to ensure a pollution free Dhaka city.
Keywords: Waste management, health effect, Collection, Separation, Segregation