Methodological proposal for the inter-institutional management of wastes in health care centers in Uruguay

This article focuses on defining a methodological proposal to appropriately address each of the aspects of the inter-institutional Management of Health Care Waste (RAS) that are generated within in the Health Care Centers (CAS) of the City of Montevideo. An application case based on the work experience of the Department of Environmental Engineering (DIA) team of the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Environmental Engineering (IMFIA) of the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad de la Republica, in a CAS of the city of Montevideo in which it contributed to significantly improve the inter-institutional management of RAS. By focusing on the environmental issues related to the management of Health Care Waste and specifically in Uruguay, it can be said that between the starting point of the execution of these studies (2007) and the present, there have not been any developments made by this team, other systematic studies related to the realization of diagnoses of the situation of the handling of Health Care Waste, or determination of the rates of generation in National Health Care Centers. In fact, the generation rates known until then corresponded to bibliographic data, of which most of the time there is no clear information on how they were obtained. It is here, where the importance of the approach in this methodology lies, since the qualitative as well as the quantitative information obtained from the studies developed corresponds to the genuine data of Health Care Centers of Uruguay. The methodology defined from these studies is the result of the analysis of management systems corresponding to our reality, which guarantees that the methodology is supported by real theoretical and practical foundations, ensuring the functionality and efficiency of this methodology. (C) 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.