Copyright © 2018 by Author/s and Licensed by Lectito BV, Netherlands. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. European Journal of Sustainable Development Research, 2018, 2(3), 36 ISSN: 2542-4742 Medical Waste Management is Vital for Safe Town Development: An Incident Study in Jessore Town, Bangladesh Uday Som 1 , Md. Shameem Hossain 2* 1 Jessore University of Science & Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Jessore-7408, BANGLADESH 2 Khulna University of Engineering & Technology, Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Khulna-9203, BANGLADESH *Corresponding Author: shameemkuet@gmail.com Citation: Som, U. and Hossain, M. S. (2018). Medical Waste Management is Vital for Safe Town Development: An Incident Study in Jessore Town, Bangladesh. European Journal of Sustainable Development Research, 2(3), 36. https://doi.org/10.20897/ejosdr/2668 Published: July 17, 2018 ABSTRACT Health care institutions (HCIs) generate waste which can causes various injuries and infections to the patients, healthcare workers and also causes harm to the surrounding environment. Medical waste management (MWM) is vital for safe town development and the misconduct of medical waste may be a significant risk factor for the infectious diseases diffusion on our environment. The study carried out on 22 HCIs included public hospital, diagnostic centers, private hospitals and clinic in Jessore town of Bangladesh. This present study focused on the existing management structure, generation rate and difficulties of MWM. An inadequate number of HCIs are following the MWM method over their self-management. The findings of this study exposed that around 3 ton of medical waste is produced per day that is about 5.56% of entire waste production in this town. Over on an ordinary 0.98kg/day/bed medical waste that covering 10.89% infectious, 15.82% plastic, 3.46% sharp, 3.87% pathological, 60.94% domestic and 5.52% pharmaceutical waste were generated in this town. Keywords: medical waste (MW), health care institutions (HCIs), health effect, handling of medical waste, medical waste management (MWM) INTRODUCTION Bangladesh is a developing country with a swiftly developing urban population, widespread health problems, little educational status and great environmental pollution (Kabir et al., 2003; Rahman et al., 2007). Medical waste is a subject of mounting concern since difficult of medical waste is appeared as one of the most significant phenomena over the past three decades (Halder et al., 2014). One estimation shows that several 5.2 million people (comprising 4 million children) die each year in the sphere from waste-related diseases (World Bank, 2002). So as to safeguard a sound environment for our health, MWM is a compulsory phenomenon. Medical wastes usually account for a very minor fraction, about one percent of the entire solid wastes produced in Bangladesh (World Bank, 2002) that can be extremely toxic as well as infective and unrestrained damping of this waste threatens environmental and human health. Healthcare waste management (HCWM) is stagnant a foremost challenge for health services in developing countries where the health care staff and nearby population is unprotected to risks because of deprived handling of waste (Lee et al., 2002). Medical waste is accomplished of causing sicknesses and illness to publics, either through direct or indirectly by polluting ground water, surface water, soil and air (Abdulla et al., 2008). Up till now, there was no well-organized scheme for appropriate medical waste management (MWM) in Bangladesh to protect environmental health dangers. A decent number of international and national studies