Characteristics of the medical waste generated at the Jordanian hospitals

Recently, Jordan has witnessed increased amounts of medical waste generated at different healthcare facilities. This has resulted in issuance of Medical Waste Regulation that aimed at regulating the management processes of such hazardous waste. To provide information on medical waste generation rates, composition and statistical characteristics, a comprehensive sampling survey was initiated after a regulatory definition of the medical waste was established. Hospitals from Public, private and educational categories were covered by the survey. This paper presents the findings of the survey. The average generation rates ranged from 0.29 to 1.36 kg/bed/day, while in terms of patient numbers it is from 0.36 to 0.87 kg/patient/day. The total daily amount of medical waste generated at the Jordanian hospitals was estimated to be 6 tones/day. The daily amounts of medical waste generated at King Abdullah University Hospital were found to follow a log normal probability distribution. Physical composition analysis of the medical waste, which conducted based on the categories identified by the Jordanian Regulation, indicated that the infectious waste category is the highest, followed by sharps category and finally pathological, cytotoxic and pharmaceutical categories were the lowest. The study concluded that all hospitals covered by the survey are practicing segregation of hazardous medical waste from general medical waste. However, the segregation process in some hospitals is still inefficient and there is a potential for improvements toward minimizing the hazardous medical waste generation.