Abstract
Medical waste management in Taiwan is a crucial issue due to its highly environmental and human health risks. The main objectives of this paper were to analyse the status of medical waste generation and treatment in recent years, and also address the discussions on the impacts of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on its generation in the first half of 2020. It showed that the reported quantities have slightly increased from 35,747 metric tonnes (Mt) in 2016 to 40,407 Mt in 2019, showing an average increase by 4.17%. This rate of increase was consistent with the hospital services. When classified by the reported codes, the C-type waste (infectious waste) accounted for about 89% of the reported quantities, which indicated an annual increase by 4.14% during the same period. In addition, the medical waste treatment in 2019 was mainly dependent on the commissioned treatment (80.18%), followed by the recycling (18.53%) and the self-treatment (1.29%). Furthermore, the impact of COVID-19 on the medical waste generation in Taiwan was not significant in the first half of 2020 compared to the data during the years of 2016-2019. It was indicated that the consistent trend was observed at the daily confirmed COVID-19 cases in Taiwan during this period. Obviously, the reduction in the hospital medical services during the COVID-19 outbreak should be offset by the increase in medical waste generation from the medical services. In order to try to ensure safe and complete destruction of the COVID-19 virus, all the waste generated from the healthcare facilities should be treated in the incineration plants.
Highlights
Medical waste, called healthcare or healthcare waste (World Health Organization, 2014), refers to all the waste generated by healthcare activities and related sources, including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes for the elderly, animal research and testing laboratories, blood banks and collection services, and biomedical research centres and laboratories
According to the official databases established by the central competent authorities (Environmental Protection Administration, 2020a, 2020b; Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2020; Ministry of Justice, 2020), the discussions on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical waste generation were addressed in this study to correlate with the epidemic control and prevention measures and the profile of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Taiwan ( Our World in Data, 2020), and to be in Hazardous industrial waste
Current status of medical waste generation and treatment In Taiwan, the legal framework for medical waste clearance and treatment was authorized by the Waste Management Act (WMA) (Ministry of Justice, 2020)
Summary
Called healthcare or healthcare waste (World Health Organization, 2014), refers to all the waste generated by healthcare activities and related sources, including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes for the elderly, animal research and testing laboratories, blood banks and collection services, and biomedical research centres and laboratories. High-income countries may generate on average up to 0.5 kg of hazardous medical waste per hospital bed per day (World Health Organization, 2018). This quantity was different from the local study by Cheng et al (2010), showing that the overall average value of infectious waste generated from the clinical or healthcare facilities in Taiwan was as high as 1.0 to 2.0 kg/bed/day. According to the report by the World Health Organization (2018), about 85% of the total quantities of waste generated by healthcare activities was general, non-hazardous waste. Based on the sustainability assessment of medical waste treatment systems (Makan and Fadili, 2021), the rotary kiln system was often adopted by high-temperature incineration facilities to control the emissions
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