Assessing the impact of power outage on medical waste management a case study of Muhimbili national hospital

The purpose of this study was to assess the impacts of power outage to medical waste management. The research focused on studying the effect of power outage at Muhimbili National hospital. Datasheets and checklists were used for the collection of data from the hospital. A Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was adopted for the analysis of data collected from Muhimbili National Hospital, a case study. The study found that 16% power outages occurred in 2008, 6% occurred in 2009, 21% occurred in 2010 and 23% power outages occurred in 2011. The correlation between operation interruptions and performance of machines was found to be -1, i.e. the two parameters are inversely correlated to one another. It was observed that 22.64% of the surveyed hospital equipment is deteriorating due to rusting. About 11% of the hospital equipment has broken electrical switches, and 9% of the equipment has broken gauges, knobs and pipelines/connections/accessories. It was identified that water shortage is the major challenging problem facing medical equipment in the Laundry, Tray centre, and Incineration sections, as these are the centre areas for medical waste treatment. Operation interruption to some hospital equipment is another problem observed. It was recommended that, in order to overcome water shortage, water pumps should be connected with generator power supply. It was further recommended that machines in the laundry which are not connected with standby generators must be connected to standby generators. Key words: Power outage, hospital equipment, medical waste treatment methods.