Thakur Dr Vikas
Assistant Professor, Department: School of Management, University/Institution: National Institute of Technology Rourkela, Odisha, Town/City Rourkela, State Odisha, Country India.
Sustain Cities Soc. 2022 Jul;82:103907. doi: 10.1016/j.scs.2022.103907. Epub 2022 Apr 29.
The COVID-19 outbreak has not only put the community health at stake but, also the environmental health. Usually, the healthcare wastes (HCWs) are composed of 15-20% of the infectious wastes and the rest of the non-infectious wastes. But, during any communicable health outbreak like COVID-19, the whole HCWs coming from the infected people become contagious. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the infectious waste is not only limited to the hospitals' premises, but also comes from the households, where COVID19 infected people are under home quarantine. Hence, keeping in mind the explosive growth in generation rates of infectious HCWs, the present study targets to expand the treatment and disposal capacity by installing temporary healthcare waste treatment facilities (HCWTFs). The study identifies ten criteria from the literature review and in consultation with the field experts, to evaluate the potential candidates for setting up temporary HCWTF during the health outbreaks. The study proposes a hybrid methodology based on grey analytical hierarchy process (G-AHP) and grey operational competitiveness rating analysis (grey-OCRA) for prioritizing the evaluation criteria and selecting the optimal temporary HCWTF location by considering the experts' inputs, respectively. The stakeholders consider the 'proximity to the inhabitation', 'infrastructure availability', and 'transportation distance' are the most important criteria for selecting the temporary HCWTF location. The proposed methodology is applied to select the temporary HCWTF location in Sundargarh District, Odisha, India. The study identifies the four locations by using geographical information system (GIS) tools and sequences them as per the preferences given by the stakeholders on various identified criteria. The study may be useful for the administration to set up the temporary facilities to quickly dispose of the extra HCWs during the pandemics. However, the future studies can be targeted to coordinate the collection, storage and transportation activities with the temporary HCWTFs.
新冠疫情不仅危及社区健康，也对环境卫生构成威胁。通常，医疗废物中15%-20%为传染性废物，其余为非传染性废物。但是，在像新冠疫情这样的传染病爆发期间，来自感染者的所有医疗废物都具有传染性。在新冠疫情期间，传染性废物不仅限于医院场所，还来自家庭，即新冠病毒感染者居家隔离的地方。因此，考虑到传染性医疗废物产生率的急剧增长，本研究旨在通过安装临时医疗废物处理设施来扩大处理和处置能力。该研究从文献综述和与领域专家协商中确定了十条标准，以评估在疫情期间设立临时医疗废物处理设施的潜在候选地点。该研究提出了一种基于灰色层次分析法（G-AHP）和灰色运营竞争力评级分析（灰色-OCRA）的混合方法，分别用于对评估标准进行优先级排序，并通过考虑专家意见来选择最佳的临时医疗废物处理设施位置。利益相关者认为，“靠近居民区”“基础设施可用性”和“运输距离”是选择临时医疗废物处理设施位置的最重要标准。所提出的方法应用于印度奥里萨邦孙德尔加尔区临时医疗废物处理设施位置的选择。该研究使用地理信息系统（GIS）工具确定了四个地点，并根据利益相关者对各种确定标准的偏好对其进行排序。该研究可能有助于政府部门设立临时设施，以便在疫情期间快速处理额外的医疗废物。然而，未来的研究可以针对与临时医疗废物处理设施协调收集、储存和运输活动。
