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Assessing knowledge, performance, and efficiency for hospital waste management—a comparison of government and private hospitals in Pakistan

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Abstract

Proper management of healthcare waste is a critical concern in many countries of the world. Rapid urbanization and population growth rates pose serious challenges to healthcare waste management infrastructure in such countries. This study was aimed at assessing the situation of hospital waste management in a major city of Pakistan. Simple random sampling was used to select 12 government and private hospitals in the city. Field visits, physical measurements, and questionnaire survey method were used for data collection. Information was obtained regarding hospital waste generation, segregation, collection, storage, transportation, and disposal. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to classify the hospitals on the basis of their relative waste management efficiencies. The weighted average total waste generation at the surveyed hospitals was discovered to be 1.53 kg/patient/day of which 75.15% consisted of general waste and the remaining consisted of biomedical waste. Of the total waste, 24.54% came from the public hospital and the remaining came from the private hospitals. DEA showed that seven of the surveyed hospitals had scale or pure technical inefficiencies in their waste management activities. The public hospital was relatively less efficient than most of the private hospitals in these activities. Results of the questionnaire survey showed that none of the surveyed hospitals was carrying out waste management in strict compliance with government regulations. Moreover, hospital staff at all the surveyed hospitals had low level of knowledge regarding safe hospital waste management practices. The current situation should be rectified in order to avoid environmental and epidemiological risks.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support extended by the China Specialized Research Fund for Doctoral Program of Higher Education [20120092110039], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71325006, 71690241, 71461137008], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71172044 and 71273047], and the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China [12&ZD207].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Mustafa Ali & Yong Geng

  2. Department of Management Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Mustafa Ali & Wenping Wang

  3. College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

    Nawaz Chaudhry & Uzma Ashraf

Authors
  1. Mustafa Ali
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  2. Wenping Wang
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  3. Nawaz Chaudhry
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  4. Yong Geng
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  5. Uzma Ashraf
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Correspondence to Mustafa Ali.

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Ali, M., Wang, W., Chaudhry, N. et al. Assessing knowledge, performance, and efficiency for hospital waste management—a comparison of government and private hospitals in Pakistan. Environ Monit Assess 189, 181 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-017-5903-9

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