Hospital Solid Waste Management in Lattakia City

• Haytham Chahin et al.
• Institute for Environmental Research, Tishreen University, Lattakia, Syria.
• Email: dir-enveir@tishreen.shern.net
• International Conference About the Sustainable Development in the Syrian Coast

Abstract

The problems related to Hospital Waste Management in Lattakia City have been growing at an alarming rate, due to shortages of financial resources, lack of trained man power, lack of education and awareness about the environmental health problems associated with hospital waste disposal. The present study aims at studying the processes of collecting, storage and transporting of hospital waste in Lattakia; and investigating the rate of waste generation in the governmental, teaching, private hospitals. Four hospitals were chosen to be applied in this work. These hospitals are: National Hospital (public), Al-Assad (teaching), Zahi-Azrak (military) and Al-Markazy (private).High values of Bed Occupancy Ratio and Average Length of Stay were recorded in Al- Assad Hospital 101%and 3.8 respectively ,while littile values were recorded in Al-Markazy Hospital (14.4%,1.3). The research work took into account the amounts of medical waste accumulated from each section. The highest amount was established in genus - delivery section (2Kg/P/day in Al-Markazy Hospital) and the lowest amount was in internal section (0.22Kg/P/day in Military Hospital).The total generation rates were determined (kilogram per patient, per day) for the four hospitals as follows:1.29; 1.01; 0.84; 0.67 Kg/p/day for Al-Markazy, Al-Assad, National and Military Hospitals respectively. In addition to the comparing different methods used in treating the hospital wastes and making recommendation for the most suitable method for Lattakia City.