The intra-institutional waste management in Montevideo healthcare centers

Abstract

Healthcare Waste (HCW) management is a pressing challenge in Latin America, where insufficient regulatory enforcement, poor segregation practices, and the lack of accurate generation data hinder sustainable waste management. This study presents a methodological proposal for the internal management of HCWs in Healthcare Centers (HCCs) in Uruguay, based on Decree 586/009 and developed through a situational diagnosis conducted at the Hospital de Clínicas "Dr. Manuel Quintela." The diagnosis involved the qualitative and quantitative characterization of HCW and implementing a weighing and classification campaign. Although the original campaign was interrupted due to a COVID outbreak, a second weighing campaign was successfully carried out at a tertiary-level private healthcare facility in Montevideo. The results from both facilities revealed generation rates significantly higher than the ratios suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO), particularly in the case of contaminated healthcare waste (HCW), which accounted for 0.5 to 0.7 kg/kg of total HCW-three to four times higher than the 15% WHO recommendation. These findings underline the urgent need to improve waste segregation practices, update national regulations, and institutionalize systematic HCW weighing campaigns to generate reliable, context-specific data for sustainable waste management in Uruguay's healthcare sector.