Assessing the challenges to medical waste management during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for the environmental sustainability in the emerging economies

Saifur Rahman Tushar; Md Fahim Bin Alam; A B M Mainul Bari; Chitra Lekha Karmaker

doi:10.1016/j.seps.2023.101513

Assessing the challenges to medical waste management during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for the environmental sustainability in the emerging economies

Socioecon Plann Sci. 2023 Jun:87:101513. doi: 10.1016/j.seps.2023.101513. Epub 2023 Jan 18.

Authors

Saifur Rahman Tushar¹, Md Fahim Bin Alam¹, A B M Mainul Bari¹, Chitra Lekha Karmaker²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh.
² Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Jashore University of Science and Technology, Jashore, Bangladesh.

Abstract

Emerging economies are struggling with proper and efficient management of waste due to their constrained resources and weak management. In recent days, this crisis has worsened due to the outbreak of the highly contagious COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid building up stockpiles and contaminating communities with potentially contagious medical waste (MW), and to ensure sustainability in the current and post-COVID-19 era, it is a dire need to develop and implement a safe and efficient medical waste management (MWM) system. This research, thereby, aims to identify, assess, and prioritize the key challenges to efficient and sustainable MWM to mitigate the impacts of the disruptions caused by situations like the pandemic in emerging economies. An integrated approach consisting of the Best-Worst Method (BWM), Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM), and Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) has been proposed to achieve the objectives. Based on the literature review and expert feedback, a total of seventeen challenges were identified and later prioritized by using BWM. The top twelve challenges have been further analyzed using ISM-MICMAC to examine their interrelationships. This study reveals that lack of proper law enforcement and insufficient financial support from investors and the government are two crucial challenges for efficient MWM implementation. The research insights can assist healthcare facility administrators, practitioners, and city managers in identifying the associated challenges and shaping strategic decisions for establishing and managing efficient MWM systems to ensure sustainable development in the post-COVID-19 era.

Keywords: Best-worst method; COVID-19; Challenges; Environmental sustainability; ISM-MICMAC; Medical waste management.