Assessment of Medical Waste Management in Teaching Hospitals in Mosul City

Background and aim: Medical waste management is of great importance due to its infectious andhazardous nature that can cause undesirable effects on humans and the environment. The objective of thisstudy was to identify segregation, storage, transportation, treatment, and disposal practices in teachinghospitals in Mosul City.Material and method: A descriptive study is designed to assess medical waste management in MosulTeaching Hospitals started from December 2012 to March 2013. The target population (health personnel)of study is approximately (448) participants served in mentioned hospitals were asked to answer the studyquestionnaire. Statistical processing was conducted by the use of SPSS version 17 and Minitab. Chisquaretest was used as the test of significance to determine the presence of an association between variables;P < 0.05 was considered significant.Results: The results indicated that 79.2% of the respondents indicated that each type of waste clearlyidentified by a colored code or symbol. The results also showed that 75.1% of the respondents stated thatthe waste is stored collected regularly. The most significant result with respect to whether the means ofconveyance and transport are cleaned regularly was 40% of the respondents stated that they have no ideaabout that. The results also showed that 53.8% of the respondents stated that there are no other optionsrather than incineration that have been examined for the final disposal of medical waste.Conclusion: The study concludes that the segregation of medical waste is done regularly and effectively,i.e. each type of medical waste is identified by a colored code, and there are containers and bagseverywhere waste is generated. Concerning medical waste transport the means of conveyance andtransport are available but there is a lack of maintenance of these means or replacing them with new ones.Keywords: medical waste management, segregation, collection, transport, final disposal.