Hospital Waste Management in Dhaka City during COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: Medical waste has received less attention in underdeveloped nations like Bangladesh and poses a severe threat to public health. The management of medical waste therefore, has been of major concern due to potentially high risks to human health and the environment. Notwithstanding this, Bangladesh has no standards governing the management of medical waste. As a result, the focus of this research was to gather information about the waste management in several hospitals in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Methodology: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among five different types of hospitals in Dhaka to find out the waste management methods of the hospital. Purposive sampling technique was used for selecting the study place. A checklist was used to observe the current medical waste management in all the hospitals. In addition, every hospital’s record regarding waste management was reviewed to extract information in this regard. A simple descriptive statistic was applied for data analysis. Results: The Mean ± SD age for the participants were 26.63± 4.18 years where female (52%) was more than male (48%). Among the participants, the highest (40%) were medical officer and maximum (77.3%) had working experiences ≤ 3 years. According to the checklist, it was found that United and Lab aid hospital had almost all the indicators related to placement of container. In regards to the segregation of wastes according to color code, all the selected 5 hospitals had seen to observe the protocol except liquid wastes. Unfortunately, Al-Basar, Al-Manar and city hospitals’ waste handler did not use safety gear during waste transportation despite they were provided safety stuff. Conclusion: This study concludes that in order to create an effective waste management program, the government should conduct periodic oversight by establishing strong provisions in this regard.