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 and Chitra Lekha Karmaker

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 2023, vol. 87, issue PA

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: Medical waste management; Challenges; Environmental sustainability; COVID-19; Best-worst method; ISM-MICMAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceps:v:87:y:2023:i:pa:s003801212300006x

DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2023.101513

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