A Goal Programming Based Bi-Stage Network Design for COVID-19 Immunization Waste Management

The recent global efforts to control the spread of highly contagious COVID-19 pandemic have been successful, largely due to extensive vaccination campaigns. However, these campaigns have generated an enormous amount of infectious medical waste. This paper presents a weighted goal programming-based optimization model for managing medical waste generated from COVID-19 vaccination efforts. The model proposes an efficient system by integrating decisions of locating treatment centers and the routing of generated waste to these centers and eventually to disposal sites, with a focus on cost reduction, risk mitigation for the environment and the nearby population. The objectives include minimizing the setup and transportation costs, reducing risks to the population, limiting the number of installed units, and ensuring environmental sustainability of disposal sites. A set of randomly selected test instances is used to test the model's effectiveness. The results indicate that the compromised solution provides both cost benefits and reduced risk to the population. Specifically, the cost objective was compromised by only 5.98% and the risk objective by 1.54%, while the environmental sustainability objective was fully achieved.  This approach effectively supports strategic choices in recycling healthcare waste generated from COVID-19 immunization. The study is expected to aid municipal managers and decision-makers of healthcare facilities in managing vaccination related waste more efficiently.