Hospitals; caring and curing palaces, or threats of infections for the community from infectious waste

ABSTRACT

To know the amount of total waste generated in the hospital daily, to know the types of waste and the amount of infectious waste generated daily, and to know about knowledge and attitude of the health care workers, doctors nurses and sanitary staff about hospital waste. The study area is the Pakistan Railway Hospital a tertiary level care Hospital consisting of 380 beds and all the essential Departments. the study was conducted from June 2006 to September 2006. This was a cross sectional study Single tertiary level care hospital was studied due to limitation of time and resources. Data was collected by using structured questionnaire and weighing of one day [24 hours] waste from all the units. Other relevant data was collected by structured interviews, meetings, discussions. waste generated in twenty four hours is 229.75 Kg. The average waste generated per patient per day is 1.05 Kg, the quantity of infectious waste generated is 104.8 Kg i.e. 0.478 Kg per patient per day. Quantity of waste generated in order of maximum to minimum waste was Gynae/Obs 1.29Kg, Paediatrics 1.15Kg, Surgery 1.13 followed by Orthopaedics 0.80Kg, ENT 0.71 Medicine 0.48 and ophthalmology 0.4Kg all per bed per day. The responses show that all the categories of hospital workers are nearly not having the proper knowledge about the hazards and therefore unable to give suggestion or solution of the problem. Health care waste management in Railway Hospital is in bad shape. The general awareness on the subject is very much lacking both by the producers as well as handlers of waste. There is acute need for training and sensitization of managers, staff and sanitary staff for safe disposal of waste