An assessment tool for healthcare waste management in Brazilian municipalities during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has put healthcare waste management (HCWM) systems under pressure worldwide. In Brazil, where municipalities routinely experience challenges in ensuring suitable disposal of healthcare waste (HCW), the pandemic has made this even more challenging. Therefore, the creation of tools and methods to help in municipal HCWM during the COVID-19 pandemic is of utmost importance. This article presents the development of a tool to evaluate HCWM in Brazilian municipalities during the pandemic. Following guidelines of health agencies, 56 indicators and 18 criteria were selected to create a tool called the municipal healthcare waste management assessment index (iMHWaste). These indicators and criteria were divided into operational, environmental, political–economic, educational and social groups. Each group considers essential aspects for sustainable management, safety and reduced spread of coronavirus. The analytic hierarchy process was used to assign the weights attributed to the groups and criteria. The indicators can be measured according to a standardized rating scale proposed for each one. These elements were aggregated with a weighted linear combination, into an equation that allows the calculation of the iMHWaste. The index is rated on a scale of 0–1. The index was applied in a Brazilian municipality considering a pre-pandemic HCWM. With the identification of the municipality’s management weaknesses, it was possible to identify the main actions that should be prioritized in the transition from traditional HCWM during the pandemic.

Circular economy of medical waste: novel intelligent medical waste management framework based on extension linear Diophantine fuzzy FDOSM and neural network approach

“…This also reduces the production cost incurred on the acquisition of raw materials. Resultantly, greater efficiency in production can be achieved by dismantling the critical elements and focusing more on the sub-processes which increase the overall production cost of the entire production process (MacNeill et al, 2020 ; Moraes et al, 2021 ).…”

Transitioning towards a sustainable circular city: How to evaluate and improve urban solid waste management in Brazil

“…To formulate the USWM-index, we used the same methodology as Moraes et al (2020) , Moraes et al (2022) , and Hugo and Lima (2021) . The study was performed in four stages: (1) selecting and ranking indicators, (2) evaluating the highest levels of the hierarchy using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, (3) formulating the index using the weighted-linear-combination aggregation method and (4) applying the index at Brazilian cities, and giving suggestions for possible measures that could be adopted to promote circularization in these studied areas.…”

“…For the formulation of the global and sectorial USWM-index, a weighted linear combination was used similar to Moraes et al (2020) , Moraes et al (2022) and Hugo and Lima (2021) .…”

Circular Economy of Medical Waste: Novel Intelligent Medical Waste Management Framework Based on Extension Linear Diophantine Fuzzy FDOSM and Neural Network Approach

“…The reuse of resources can be related to production tools and raw materials (Rume & Islam, 2020;Teymourian et al, 2021). Greater e ciency in the processes depends on dismantling the critical elements along the chain of operations and identifying the essential points that increase production costs (MacNeill et al, 2020; Moraes et al, 2021). The literature con rmed that healthcare waste has become more contagious because of the coronavirus outbreak (Rupani et al, 2020;Ibn-Mohammed et al, 2020).…”