A system dynamics approach for hospital waste management

• Published in: Waste management (Elmsford) Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 442 - 449
• Main Authors: Chaerul, Mochammad, Tanaka, Masaru, Shekdar, Ashok V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 2008; New York, NY Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Developing Countries; Exact sciences and technology; General treatment and storage processes; Hospitals; Humans; Indonesia; Life Expectancy; Medical Waste Disposal - methods; Models, Theoretical; Other wastes and particular components of wastes; Pollution; Population Density; Risk Assessment; Urban and domestic wastes; Wastes; Indonesia; Indonesia, Jawa, Jakarta; Waste dumping; Hospital waste; Segregation; Waste treatment; Scavenging; Urban waste; Software package; Urban area; Modeling; Waste management; Solid waste; Hospital; Public health
• ISSN: 0956-053X; 1879-2456
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2007.01.007

Healthcare services provided by hospitals may generate some infectious wastes. Although a large percentage of hospital waste is classified as general waste, which has similar nature as that of municipal solid waste and, therefore, could be disposed in municipal landfills, a small portion of infectious waste has to be managed in the proper manner in order to minimize risk to public health. Many factors involved in the hospital waste management system often link to one another, which require a comprehensive analysis to determine the role of each factor in the system. In this paper, we present a hospital waste management model based on system dynamics to determine the interaction among factors in the system using a software package, Stella ®. A case study of the City of Jakarta, Indonesia is selected. The hospital waste generation is affected by various factors including the number of beds in the hospitals and the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome. To minimize the risk to public health, we found that waste segregation, as well as infectious waste treatment prior to disposal, has to be conducted properly by the hospital management, especially when scavenging takes place in landfill sites in developing countries.