Assessment of Medical Waste Management within Selected Hospitals in Gaza Strip Palestine: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The present study aims to provide information about the management, segregation, storage and disposal of medical wastes in public as well as private hospitals in Gaza Strip-Palestine. A cross sectional study was employed and simple random sampling technique were used to distribute a semi structured questionnaire among 164 health workers at two hospitals in Gaza Strip with 100 respondents from governmental hospital and 64 respondents from private hospital. The results disclosed that, healthcare facilities whether private and governmental hospitals still suffer from inappropriate biomedical wastes management which have not received sufficient concern according to 60% of participants who pointed out that hazardous and medical wastes are still handled and disposed together with domestic wastes and segregation was applied only for sharp waste which is collected in special sharp boxes at the beginning after usage. Furthermore, around 47% of respondents don't know where medical storage place is, and don't know if there is mark to show place of storage. Besides, 42% of respondents don't know if it's there mean for transferring medical waste, and 43% don't know its type or if it's available always. In the surveyed hospitals, there is deficiency in implementing training courses about healthcare waste management as 23% only of all study subjects had been provided with training on how to deal with medical waste. Therefore, the Ministry of Health and healthcare institutions should give more consideration towards policies for the proper management and disposal of health care wastes in order to develop medical waste management practices in Palestine.