. Conclusion
Medical waste disposal is a field that requires further study to meet the growing global demand for medical waste disposal. Rising healthcare usage, driven by a variety of factors, is increasing med- ical waste production which in turn is putting stress on current disposal systems. Current disposal strategies involve sorting waste at the point-of-disposal within healthcare facilities, and then transporting the infectious medical waste to a safe disposal site, where it is treated by incineration or autoclaving and the residual product landfilled. Both incineration and autoclave treatment methods have drawbacks, with incineration creating undesirable atmospheric emissions which cause adverse health and environ- mental impacts, and autoclave treatment not able to handle all types of waste nor producing a treated product that is universally accepted at landfills.
The best way to control the impact of medical waste is to pro- duce less, and one of the most effective ways to do this is to ensure that only infectious medical waste is sent for treatment e other hospital waste should be treated in the same manner as municipal household waste. This could be accomplished through better training of healthcare workers along with the implementation of standardized medical waste streams and disposal bin colors.
Further, there are a number of moves that governments could make to reduce the problems of excess infectious medical waste generation and to improve treatment and disposal of all types of medical waste. Firstly, governments should provide highly explicit, standardized definitions of infectious and non-infectious medical waste and should tightly regulate the disposal of infectious waste to prevent illegal dumping of waste. Secondly, governments should provide healthcare facilities with incentives, monetary or other- wise, to reduce medical waste production. These incentives will help convince local healthcare facility management to make waste reduction, particularly infectious medical waste production, a pri- ority. Finally, governments should seek to increase research in the area of medical waste reduction and treatment though research grants and industry research partnerships. In particular, priority should be given to research with medical equipment suppliers to develop and produce products that release negligible amounts of dioxins or mercury when incinerated. These products will be particularly valuable to developing nations where many waste disposal facilities lack the advanced pollution control technologies used in the developed world to prevent the release of toxic sub- stances produced by waste incineration. As such, these incineration-safe medical products reduce the risk of exposing populations in developing nations to the harmful emissions pro- duced by the incineration of infectious medical waste.