Biomedical Waste Management Policy in India, USA and China : A Comparative Study

One of the barriers to achieving the dream of a disease-free nation is the disposal of biomedical waste into the environment. The inappropriate handling of such waste causes a significant threat to the life of health-care professionals, residents, and the overall environmental integrity. Thus it is important to manage waste in order to reduce its negative health and environmental effects in a sustainable manner. Although there are several methods for waste collection, segregation, processing, safe transportation, effective treatment, and proper disposal of biomedical waste are in place, the prevalent waste disposal practices are not adequately addressing the issue of biomedical waste management. The research objective of this paper is to comprehensively analyze and compare biomedical waste management rules and regulations of different countries with a focus on identifying common trends and divergent practices. The paper also tries to examine bio-medical waste management practices, including the common sources of production, handling and disposal methods. Many developed nations have bio-medical waste legislation; however there is generally little guidance as to which objects can be defined as infectious. The author provides brief information about the types of wastes that fall under the category of biomedical waste, followed by the available approaches for biomedical waste management in India, USA and China. Following that, the flaws in traditional biomedical waste management techniques are reviewed and efforts have been made to analyze and forecast the market dynamics of bio-medical waste management in these three nations.