An assessment of medical waste management practices in the North-eastern Free State, South Africa

Abstract

The proper handling and disposal of medical waste in accordance with national guidelines is very important. This study was undertaken to investigate the state of medical waste and management practices in different hospitals in the north-eastern Free State Province, South Africa. A random sample of ten (10) hospitals was selected. Observation of operations was carried over a period of six months. A stratified random sample of 138 staff members spread across the ten medical facilities was selected and face-to-face interviews were conducted. The hospitals were grouped into 3 categories namely large, medium and small in terms of the number of hospital beds. Data collection through observation and covered waste generation, storage, handling, transportation, treatment and management procedures. Data analysis made use of SPSS to generate descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients and t-tests in hypothesis testing. The findings reveal that medical personnel do not treat medical waste as specified in official guidelines, there is no formal training for personnel, medical waste is not a key priority, there are low levels of environmental awareness, inappropriate treatment of waste at some sites, and inadequate budget allocations for medical waste management. These findings indicate that there is an urgent need for addressing issues of awareness for managers, better on-the job training for personnel, better systems for on-ward conveyance of waste from facilities to official medical waste treatment plants, an up-grade of existing incinerators and a consistent schedule of data capture should be implemented.