Hospitals and other health care facilities generate a vast amount of biomedical wastes that have serious health effects on general public if not manage properly. Health care basically creates wastes that bring potential risks to health, but these can be prevented if the wastes are disposed properly to protect health and environment. This study was conducted to determine the current biomedical waste management practices among hospitals in the Municipality of Bongao, Tawi–Tawi. A descriptive, cross–sectional study was utilized to assess the practices of the hospital health workers on waste management and to describe the hospital waste management practices. The respondents were selected using convenience sampling and data was collected through a pre - designed Questionnaire and actual observational checklist. An actual observation was done on healthcare workers in different areas such as ER/OPD, nurses’ station, wards, clinical laboratory, pharmacy and off–site disposal. The results showed that all three hospitals do not have existing permits required on healthcare waste management. Although all have written policy on biomedical waste handling, the policies were not updated as of the conduct of the study. Biomedical waste segregation was practiced in all 3 hospitals (69%) with the use of color–coding scheme (91%). However, 31% of the respondents on actual observation still throw hazardous wastes to other general wastes like the used gloves, cottons from the patients, and barrel of syringes. This means that proper waste management is not completely implemented in terms of segregation scheme and waste categories. Treatment by chemical disinfection was done only on sharps hazardous wastes in two of the hospitals. Other non–sharps infectious wastes, are not treated before final disposal. There is also no treatment on hazardous wastewater before disposal. All the wastes generated by the three hospitals in Bongao, Tawi–Tawi are being collected by the Municipal collection system together with general municipal wastes; it is disposed in an open dump site with no final waste treatment done. This study concludes that all three hospitals did not consistently comply with the set standard practices on biomedical waste management by the responsible agencies.

Keyword: Biomedical waste management