All health care setups in India have to follow provisions of Biomedical Waste Handling

Background: The field of medicine has improved by leaps & bounds. More & more critical patients are being treated by ever increasing number of hospitals. The need for sterility & infection control has lead to increased use of disposable consumables. Substantial waste generated is infectious and is a potential risk factor to the society if not properly disposed. This study was done with an aim to find waste generated by a premier public hospital in North India catering to a huge catchment area. Methods: All health care setups in India have to follow provisions of Biomedical Waste Handling Rules enacted in 1999. Every hospital has to submit an annual report detailing waste generated and its disposal. Annual reports submitted by the study hospital were used for data collection. Results: 498 tons of biomedical waste was generated in the hospital per year or 1.3 tons/day during 5 year study period. 56 % of this waste was incinerated. Infective waste generated was 0.4 kg/bed/day which is in accordance with findings of other hospitals. No significant correlation was seen between incinerable & non incinerable waste generated during the study period [r= 0.616, n= 5, p= 0.269]. Conclusion: Hospital wastes are increasing day by day. Ways need to be developed to reduce waste without compromising on sterility and infection control. More environment friendly methods of disposal vis-à-vis incineration need to be developed to handle huge amounts of infectious waste. Keywords— Hospitals, waste, disposal.