There has
been concern that the facilities for waste disposal from healthcare
establishments cannot cope with these growing demands (PRISM,
2004; Hassan et al., 2008). Any waste management plan should
be based upon a reliable estimate of the amount of waste generated
(Karamouz et al., 2007) and the objective of this study was
to use a rigorous sampling method to gain a reliable estimate of
the hazardous and non-hazardous waste generated by HCEs in
Dhaka City. Reports dealing with the total waste generated in
Dhaka and Bangladesh (Table 1) give estimates of total waste generation
in the city ranging from 7.2 ton per day to 400 ton per day.
Some of the estimates, including those from the best resourced
studies, are associated with projects not primarily intended to obtain
a reliable estimate of total waste generation, while others use
extrapolation from studies undertaken in other countries, and still
others do not provide details of the basis of their estimates.