Al-Khatib Issam A, Eleyan Derar, Garfield Joy
Institute of Environmental and Water Studies, Birzeit University, P.O. Box 14, Birzeit, West Bank, Palestine.
Computer Science Department, Birzeit University, West Bank, Palestine.
Environ Monit Assess. 2016 Sep;188(9):503. doi: 10.1007/s10661-016-5487-9. Epub 2016 Aug 3.
Hospitals and health centers provide a variety of healthcare services and normally generate hazardous waste as well as general waste. General waste has a similar nature to that of municipal solid waste and therefore could be disposed of in municipal landfills. However, hazardous waste poses risks to public health, unless it is properly managed. The hospital waste management system encompasses many factors, i.e., number of beds, number of employees, level of service, population, birth rate, fertility rate, and not in my back yard (NIMBY) syndrome. Therefore, this management system requires a comprehensive analysis to determine the role of each factor and its influence on the whole system. In this research, a hospital waste management simulation model is presented based on the system dynamics technique to determine the interaction among these factors in the system using a software package, ithink. This model is used to estimate waste segregation as this is important in the hospital waste management system to minimize risk to public health. Real data has been obtained from a case study of the city of Nablus, Palestine to validate the model. The model exhibits wastes generated from three types of hospitals (private, charitable, and government) by considering the number of both inpatients and outpatients depending on the population of the city under study. The model also offers the facility to compare the total waste generated among these different types of hospitals and anticipate and predict the future generated waste both infectious and non-infectious and the treatment cost incurred.
医院和健康中心提供各种各样的医疗保健服务，通常会产生危险废物以及一般废物。一般废物的性质与城市固体废物相似，因此可以在城市垃圾填埋场进行处置。然而，危险废物会对公众健康构成风险，除非对其进行妥善管理。医院废物管理系统包含许多因素，即床位数量、员工数量、服务水平、人口、出生率、生育率以及邻避综合征。因此，这个管理系统需要进行全面分析，以确定每个因素的作用及其对整个系统的影响。在本研究中，基于系统动力学技术提出了一个医院废物管理模拟模型，以使用ithink软件包确定系统中这些因素之间的相互作用。该模型用于估计废物分类，因为这在医院废物管理系统中对于将对公众健康的风险降至最低很重要。已从巴勒斯坦纳布卢斯市的一个案例研究中获取实际数据来验证该模型。该模型通过考虑根据所研究城市的人口数量确定的住院患者和门诊患者数量，展示了三种类型医院（私立、慈善和政府）产生的废物。该模型还提供了比较这些不同类型医院产生的总废物量的功能，并预测和预估未来产生的传染性和非传染性废物以及所产生的处理成本。
