Assessment and Design of Bio-Medical Waste Management System for a Medical College Hospital in Tamil Nadu

Hospital waste is a mixture of general refuse, biomedical Laboratory and pathological wastes. Totally 75-90 % of the waste produced by the health care provides non-risk health care waste. Whereas, the remaining 10- 25 % consist of infectious pathological waste and is of great health concern, if not segregated from general hospital waste. This study was initiated to characterize solid and liquid wastes generated in healthcare institutions and to provide a framework for the safe management of these wastes. The project was carried at medical hospital. A waste audit carried out at these sites revealed approximately 10 % of solid wastes was hazardous in nature, consisting mainly of infectious, pathological and chemical wastes. The average amount of hazardous wastes per patient per day was found to be 0.080-0.091kg. Hospital effluent not only has aberrant physico-chemical characteristics but also has high loads of multiple drug resistant bacteria and discharging the effluent in a municipal sewage system could be a grave public health hazard. Effluent treatment plant (ETP) with terminal chlorination needs to be added to safeguard the dangers from hospital effluent. However, most of the hospitals believe it to be an unaffordable proposal. The medical hospital is a 1100 bedded tertiary care centre spread over 26 acres of land with huge green belts, requiring 24.44MLD of water per day. The scarcity of water affected the hospital activities and irrigation of green belt. The ETP was setup at and the treated effluent has all the physico-chemical characteristics within the specified limits and is free from viable multiple drug resistant bacteria. The treated effluent water is used for irrigation and sanitary cleaning thus, the ETP has been proved to be eco-friendly cost effective proposal.