Designing a new infectious healthcare-waste management system in sfax governorate, tunisia

Abstract

Infectious Healthcare-Waste (IHW) management is of great importance due to its potential environmental hazards and public health risks. The collection and the disposal of IHW are highly visible and important services that involve large expenditures in the world and particularly in Tunisia. This paper discusses two main problems in the current solid IHW management practices in Sfax governorate (Tunisia). The first problem is about how choose the best waste treatment and disposal scenario, using a multiple criteria decision making analysis. The Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) implemented with Expert choice software, confirms that the best scenario is to apply central steam sterilization equipment, which will be used by all hospitals. Accordingly, the second problem concerns the off-site transport of IHW from the twelve hospitals (public and private) in the governorate of Sfax to this overall center. This problem of transportation is modeled as a capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). Experimental results are reported for the design of the routing system for IHW transportation, using the solver CPLEX 9.0 software. Future legislation concerning IHW management is supposed to take into account the various results of this research.