Sixty-nine thousand tonnes of medical waste were collected in Turkey in 2012, according to Waste Statistics Of Health Institutions of the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat).

In the report, posted on TurkStat’s website on Friday, the Waste Statistics of Health covered 1,449 health institutions, which were in operation by the end of 2012.

All of them indicated that the medical waste was collected separately within their institutions.

According to the data, the medical waste collected separately, 46% was disposed of in controlled landfill sites after sterilization and 28% without sterilization; 16% was disposed of in municipal dumping sites after sterilization and 1% without sterilization, and 8% was incinerated.

TurkStats data shows that 41% of total medical waste was collected in three metropolitan cities.

Out of the total medical waste, 22% was collected from health institutions in Istanbul, 11% in Ankara, and 8% in Izmir.

The Table footnote is particularly interesting, showing a huge reduction in the amount of healthcare waste burned in open pits of buried (hopefully in sanitary landfill, but there is no evidence for this). That is a commendable improvement, but one must wonder how much waste is simply not recorded here, arising in centres outside the three main metropolitan cities and thus officially “off the radar”?

http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=16117