Survey of Hospital Waste Management, Case Study: State Hospitals of Ardabil City

Medical wastes include many contagious pathogens. Contact of sensitive peoples with medical wastes can lead to infection diseases. This study was conducted to determine waste management status in educational hospitals of Ardabil city and offer solutions for improvement of current situation and present problems. This descriptive-cross sectional study performed from May to July 2008. Four Educational hospitals of Ardabil city were studied. Data were collected using a checklist including 64 questions through observation. Qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and quantities with computing of mean and standard deviation in Excel software. The percent of infectious and non-infectious wastes in Imam, Alavi, Bou-Ali and Fatemi hospitals were 62 and 38, 64 and 36, 45 and 56, 32 and 68%, respectively. Sharp wastes were collected in Safety boxes. Storage time of wastes in temporary sites was on average 23 hours. Cats were seen in all temporary sites. Except Imam Hospital where infectious wastes were incinerated in two-kiln incinerator and only non-infectious wastes were transferred to landfill, in all other hospitals, despite of segregation of infectious and non-infectious wastes in generation sources, all of wastes were collected together and transferred to landfill. More attention should be paid to hazards and safe disposal of infectious wastes. Two significant problems in hospital wastes management are: (1) lack of knowledge of hospital personnel and manager about hospital wastes problems, (2) lack of sufficient fund for purchasing risk reduction equipments.