Hospital Wastes Handling And Disposal: A Case Study Of Hospitals In Shinyanga Municipality, Tanzania.

ABSTRACT

A case study of hospital wastes handling and disposal was carried out Shinyanga municipality in Tanzania, where issues dealing with the kind of waste produced at the health facilities, waste storage, collection, transport and disposal were looked at. The challenges experienced by the people in charge of the hospital wastes were also studied. The literature review covered kinds of hospital waste generated, basic elements of h6spital care waste management, and challenge to manage hospital wastes, inadequate hospital care waste management and improper management of wastes generated in health facilities. Therefore this study was to explore the methods used to handle and dispose hospital waste as an effort to prevent infections on people~ s health and prevent environmental pollution in Shinyanga Municipal council.

This was done using simple random sampling and judgmental sampling to sample the respondents. Questionnaires, interview guides, and participate observation were the tools used. The research focused on only 70 respondents out of 529 of the target population. Data processing and analysis were used to extract meaningful information from the raw data obtained from the field. It was identified that the largest percentage of health facilities implemented improper management of storage, collection, transportation and disposal of hospital wastes. Shinyanga municipality should initiate out-sourcing to private companies/NGOs to manage some of the processes, for example, collection and transportation of hospital wastes and provide enough equipment. With this, proper and improved hospital waste management can be achieved on storage, collection, transportation and disposal.