جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « infectious waste » در نشریات گروه « پزشکی »

We aimed to determine the feasibility of ozone for disinfection of infectious solid waste in hospital.

Spores of Bacillus atrophaeus were used to monitor the process of inactivating microbial agents using ozone in medical solid waste in the hospitals of Tabriz City, Iran. For this purpose, culture medium containing the mentioned bacteria was placed in the bags containing medical wastes. The ozone generator was equipped with a constant dose of 5 grams per liter, with a discharge of 1 and 3 liters per minute and contact time of 10 to 120 min. Then the ozone exposure indicators were incubated for 24-48h at 36 ± 1 °C and, finally, the absence of colony growth in the culture medium was considered as the success of ozone in disinfection of infectious solid waste. This process was performed with 4-time replications.

The complete removal of B. atrophaeus was obtained for non-compacted and compacted infectious solid waste, at contact time of 15 and 50 min, respectively. The efficiency of removal of B. atrophaeus by the process of wet ozone injection through a glass column was 100% in 30 minutes and by separate injection of water vapor into the contact tank was 100% in 50 minutes. The results of this study showed that the use of ozone technology was effective in the inactivation and destruction of microbial agents in medical solid waste.

Employing different advanced technology of oxidization especially ozone in order to decrease the environmental pollution is considered as one of management approaches.

Solid waste management is one of the important aspects of the hospital management.

In this study, we examined the quantity and composition of medical solid waste in eight private hospitals in Tehran. For this purpose, a checklist was used through interviews with hospital waste management staff as well as collecting information on hospital waste generation. The annual average of obtained data was analyzed in this study.

The results indicated that the private hospitals under study generated solid waste ranging from 24 to 1091 kg/day. The average medical waste generation in the studied privative hospitals was 4 kg/bed/day equal to 5.09 kg/patient/day. Common waste accounted for 70.73% of total hospital solid waste, while infectious and sharp waste accounted for 31.04% of the hospital solid waste. Infectious wastes were disinfected using autoclave in all hospitals.

Segregation of infectious waste from hospital waste mass reduces the environmental and health risk of hospital waste and reduces the cost of waste management in private hospitals.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused a devastating pandemic scenario in the world. The mortality rate has increased and new socio-economic challenges are emerging. Millions of gloves, gowns, face masks, and face shields are used daily to prevent airborne transmission and facilitate the treatment of COVID-19. Mismanagement of these wastes can lead to increased concerns due to their contamination potential. A comprehensive plan to improve the management of medical wastes in every country requires awareness of the current status of solid waste. As a result, the study aimed to calculate and estimate the consumption rate of face masks and medical waste generation rate during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran. Also, the performance of different departments of medical waste management and future challenges are discussed.

The daily consumption of face masks and medical waste generation were calculated based on the population data, the percentage of the urban population, face mask acceptance rate, the number of face masks needed per person per day, total COVID-19 confirmed cases, and medical waste generation rate (kg/bed/day).

The consumption of face masks in Iran is estimated at 46576000 pieces per day. Also, the three provinces of Tehran (9,560,000 pieces), Khorasan Razavi (3,825,600 pieces), and Isfahan (3,523,200 pieces) have the highest consumption rate of masks, respectively. Increasing the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased the medical waste generation rate. Until April 3, 2021, more than 1,920,394 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Iran, and calculations show that the medical waste generation rate in Iran is about 7,585.56 tons per day.

COVID-19 is a highly infectious and problematic disease. The continuous increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased face mask consumption rate and medical waste generation rate, and as a result, new challenges have emerged in the field of solid waste management. These emerging challenges in managing solid waste during the COVID-19 pandemic necessitate the development of appropriate waste management policies and strategies.

The aim of this study was to provide a suitable system for disposal of hospital waste and design and construction of a safe device for infectious waste using a combination of chemical and mechanical methods.

 This research is a laboratory study and based on the existing problems, design and construction of a decontamination device for hospital infectious waste was performed by combination of chemical and mechanical methods in a closed reactor. To determine the appropriate mixture of different compounds of sodium hydroxide with lime and sodium carbonate with lime, three treatments were selected and used.
 

The results of this study showed that the decontamination waste device by chemical and mechanical methods was effective in eliminating 98% of bacterial, fungal, and viral contaminants. The results showed that the neutralization rate for total bacterial contamination of the coliform, pathogenic viruses, Escherichia, Bacillus subtilis, Salmonella, and Shigella using a 30% ratio was related to the chemical composition of lime and sodium hydroxide, lime and sodium carbonate, respectively. In the designed device, the best temperature, humidity and pH conditions were determined to be 15°C, 45% and 12.8, respectively.

 The results of the decontaminated waste tests revealed that the simultaneous application of physical and chemical methods can be used as a safe and suitable alternative in infectious waste disposal systems.

In developing countries, due to improper segregation and management of health care waste (HCW), the environmental effects of these infectious components are becoming a major challenge. The purpose of this study was to evaluate quantity and quality of HCW, and current status of waste management in four educational hospitals of Abadan School of Medical Sciences, Iran.

This descriptive study was conducted in four educational hospitals of Abadan School of Medical Sciences to evaluate the amount of production rate, type of hospital waste, and the current status of HCW management. These HCW of hospitals were selected and sampled daily in four seasons in 2018. The waste was manually segregated by the hospital staffs into 8 components (according to WHO manual) and weighted. Proposed questionnaires of WHO for developing countries was used to evaluate HCW management system of studied hospitals.

The average of hospital waste produced was 604.75 kg/day including 217 kg/day of infectious and 387.75 kg/day of non-infectious waste, respectively. The per capita of hospital waste generated in all studied hospitals was 4.13 kg/bed-day. The main part of infectious and non-infectious wastes was food waste and plastics which are recyclable. In addition, 70% of the separation sources were performed correctly, which facilitates segregation. All hospitals used autoclave and hydro-clave treatment for disinfection before final disposal. However, the current management status was poor and underdeveloped.

According to the waste management hierarchy, waste minimization can be considerable if carried out in an effective, safe and sustainable manner. But in studied hospitals, this strategy was very weakly managed. There was no management program (waste minimization, separation, reuse and recycling) in the hospitals.