Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings

Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings 1
Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings
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Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings 2
CHAPTER ONE: Background Information and Literature Review
1.0 Introduction
Health facilities are places that provide health care services to patients; however, they can
diffuse diseases and cause serious health problems to people and adverse effects on the
environment. They include clinics, outpatient care centers, hospitals, veterinary or dental,
medical laboratories and specialized care centers. Medical wastes are any wastes that contain
infectious materials or constituents that are potentially contagious (Chartier, 2015). Hazardous
waste materials pretenses health risks to patients and people who handle them as well to the
environment. Hazardous medicinal wastes are contagious and posture severe pressures to
personal health and environmental. It needs proper handling, managing, storage, and disposal,
(Blenkharn 2015, p. 543). Hospital wastes are alienated into two sets; Clinical hospital wastes
and over-all hospital wastes (non-clinical). Clinical wastes contain harmful wastes, which
constitute 10-25% of the total wastes formed in health services, and contains sharps,
pharmaceuticals, infectious, radioactive, pathological, genotoxic residues plus chemicals.
General residues include bagged wastes, spillage in the health facilities (Farzadika, 2016).
Keywords
Hazardous – unsafe, risk or dangerous that might cause harm to people or environment.
Healthcare waste- surplus materials generated due to health facility activities. Also, refer
to medical wastes.

Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings 3
1.1 Literature Review
Hazardous Medical wastes are any solid wastes produced in treatment, vaccination of
people or animals or during diagnosis, related to research, testing and production of biological
specimens from health care facilities (Nema 2015, p. 34). Infectious wastes include; pathological
wastes, human blood wastes and products of blood, used sharp objects, culture stock of
contagious agents, contaminated animal autopsy that had been contaminated due to direct
interaction with infectious and wastes starting with laboratories such as medical, corpses and
body fragments, pathological , surgical treatment and pharmaceutical (Ojuolape 2016, p. 50).
Management of medical wastes rural health services
Most hospitals separate medicinal wastes into three categories (Liu 2015, p. 938). The
conventional way is by use of the three-bin system to accommodate wastes. Highly infectious
wastes are placed inside a red bin, Infectious inside a yellow bin and general wastes inside a
black bin. Sharps are composed of safety boxes. A subsequent study carried out by World Health
Organization (Tayor, 2014), this can be deliberated as;
a) Sources of wastes
Waste weighing is prepared simultaneously in seven days to acquire the tendency of the week’s
waste generation. It is of great significance by way of picturing out the number of medical
wastes produced in health facilities to plan to manage them.
b) Minimizing Wastes
Waste Minimization of medical wastes is one of the necessary plans considered in the handling
of the health facilities’ wastes in proper ways.

Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings 4
c) Containers of wastes
A significant number of health facilities engendering sharps uses 5-liter boxes of sharps, and
some use plastic sharps containers of 2-liters. In the case of non-sharps wastes, 10 to 30-liter bins
are commonly used. Nevertheless, the invention of buckets and carton boxes to be applied
instead of waste bins have been detected in some of the healthcare facilities in rural areas.
Treatment of wastes, Storage, and their Transportation
In most rural health care facilities, wheelbarrows are used for transporting wastes within
the facility premises; other facilities use trolleys. Using wheelbarrows has been discouraged as it
leads to spillage of the residues on the way. Recommendations for transporting wastes within
hospitals would be trolleys separate from ones that contain infectious wastes.
Medical wastes are stored in specific refuse storage rooms, which should be fenced, and
their entry restricted from unauthorized personnel. However, in some health facilities, these
rooms have been observed to be disused, while some places have leaking roofs.
The most commonly used technique in treating wastes in most health facilities is by
incineration by use of functional combustion. Other ways of managing wastes are by use of
composite pits in the case of non-clinical biodegradable wastes and shredders.
Health hazards posed by hazardous medical wastes to people and the environment
Poor management of hazardous medical wastes leads to public and occupation health
risks. Waste handlers, health workers, haulers and the public are in great danger of being infected
with these wastes. Medical wastes lead to contamination of water, soil and air, which may affect
the ecological system (Chawla 2016, p. 254). If medical waste is not disposed of properly,

Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings 5
community members around a rural health facility may collect the wastes like syringes and resell
the materials that lead to severe diseases such as AIDS, Hepatitis B, and SARS. Improper
disposal of medical wastes to the environment has an enormous impact on the entire life cycle
(Thankur 2015, p. 860). Medical waste pollutants like heavy metals create inconvenience to the
surrounding, and their accumulation in the soil affects the plant. This may also result in
contamination of groundwater hence decreasing the quality of fresh water in the environment.
Knowledge of Medical Handlers
Knowledge of personnel involved in hazardous waste management is essential and
includes knowing the categories of medical wastes; risks associated medical wastes and proper
ways of handling and disposal methods. This personnel comprises medical officers, nurses,
public health officers and medical waste workers (Pai, 2015). According to (Windfeld 2015), one
of the steps recommended for improving medical waste management is to raise the awareness on
the risks that are associated to health facility waste and of harmless sound practices among
medical waste handlers.
Challenges encountered by healthcare facilities in hazardous medical waste management
The maintainable management of the medical wastes has continued to generate at a high
rate of public concern due to problems of health-related with exposure of people to high-risk
waste from health facilities (Gupta 2015, p. 104). The quantity and nature of these materials
generated, institutional practices about most perfect ways of managing the wastes; water
recycling and segregation are quite poorly examined and recorded in various countries despite
health risks posed by the wastes due to improper handling (Adegbith, 2014).

Hazardous Healthcare Waste Management in Healthcare Settings 6
Medical residues are a unique kind of wastes as they frequently contain constituents that
might be unsafe and can lead to ill health to people who are exposed (Caniato 2015). Some
studies have indicated that improper handling of medical wastes and their disposal leads to high
health risks to workers who may directly meet them, most likely children and scavengers. This
can lead to diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis (Chopra 2017, p. 65). According to (Ojuolape,
2016), roughly 9-17 million new-fangled cases of Hepatitis B infection, 2.4- 4.8 million cases of
Hepatitis C in addition 80,0 00-16000 cases of HIV. This is mostly because of unsafe injections
and most properly improper waste managing techniques each year.
Healthcare waste streams during segregation and management are usually small in their
quantity. (Chudasama 2017, p. 21). Wastes that are generated in the facilities most of them are
treated as a regular municipal solid exception of a particular portion of the wastes that require
special treatment like the pathological wastes, sharps and other highly infectious wastes from
biological agents, chemicals, and pharmaceutical hazardous wastes. They require proper
handling of their packaging, transportation, storage, and disposal.
Most of the facilities lack segregation measures in managing the hazardous and in
hazardous wastes poses a great problem in the handling of these wastes in the facility. The
absence of laws and regulation in some facilities indicates a challenge in managing the wastes in
collection and transportation. Some facilities lack proper equipment for waste treatment, storage,
and disposal. Inadequate protective measures offered by the facility may lead to serious health
concerns to people. Some subordinate staff members lack knowledge and skills in the
management of healthcare wastes due to insufficient training offered by the facility hence
leading to poor healthcare waste managing facilities.