Medical waste management and production rate in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The population of Saudi Arabia is about 32 million with continuously increasing waste generated from healthcare facilities. Assessment of medical waste (MW) generation rates in hospitals is a crucial step in medical waste management and disposal systems. The objective of this study was to analyze the present status of medical waste management and to statistically evaluate the generation rates of MW in healthcare centers and hospitals located in the Eastern Province of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The average per hospital MW production in the Eastern Province (EP) was found to be 640.74 (± 0.59) ton/year. The study results showed that the average production per health center was 0.598 (± 0.119) ton/year. In addition, the calculated average MW generation rate is 0.51 kg/bed/day and the average MW produced per patient per day is1.66 kg/patient/day. The estimation of MW production in the EP about 5781.9 ton/day. Moreover, this study reveals that the practice used in all healthcare centers and hospitals in the Eastern Province is to separate solid waste from MW and to collect and transfer for final dumping in a non-engineered landfill by operated by private authorized companies. This study strongly recommends using autoclave technology for the plastic part of the medical waste at the collection site and reuse as fuel in waste-to-energy facilities or as a fuel alternative in cement industry.