Sunday, October 22, 2006 Health care group allays fear of hospital waste crisis
FOLLOWING reports of alleged extortion of money by some environment department personnel from hospitals that fail to comply with regulations on hospital waste management, a health care group said the fear of a hospital waste crisis is largely unfounded and that hospitals can easily meet the environmental standard required of them.
Merci Ferrer, coordinator of Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia, said the Department of Health (DOH) prescribes many available options for hospitals wishing to address their hazardous infectious waste. "The real challenge for hospitals is how to systematize their waste collection system to ensure that the infectious waste that needs treatment prior to landfill disposal is minimized and separated from regular waste. If hospitals would consult with the DOH, they wouldn't be needlessly exposing themselves to extortion attempts by some unscrupulous DENR officials," she said.
In a waste management manual published in 2004, the DOH prescribes, among other things, microwave, autoclave and chemical disinfection to knock off the pathogens from the infectious waste. While proper management of hospital waste employing these treatments has its cost, proper waste management need not be prohibitively expensive. According to Ferrer, a hospital's total volume of infectious waste, if properly segregated from the rest, is minuscule. The real size of the hospital waste problem is blown out of its proper proportion by the improper practice by some hospitals of mixing regular solid waste with their infectious waste.
The extortion was reported by Dr. Tiburcio Macias, president of the Philippine Hospital Association, during a meeting of Metro Manila mayors and officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Macias claimed that almost every week, DENR officials demand P50,000 to P200,000 from hospitals in Luzon and Mindanao.
The heightened regulation of hospitals' waste management came with the adoption last year of a joint administrative order by the DOH and the DENR, requiring health care facilities to register as hazardous waste generators and to present waste management plans for the renewal of their licenses.
Previously, hospitals routinely burned their waste, both infectious and regular municipal solid waste, usually within their hospital compounds. With greater awareness of the hazards posed by such practice and following findings that hospital waste incineration is a major source of dioxins in the environment, hospitals around the world have been pressured to adopt more environmentally friendly methods of waste disposal. In the country, the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999 expressly prohibits the burning of hospital waste.
In Metro Manila, most hospitals contract out their infectious waste to centralized waste treatment facilities. At least one hospital, the St Luke's Medical Center, has its own autoclave system to treat its infectious waste prior to landfill disposal. Recently, the DOH-controlled hospitals in Manila grouped together and contract out their hospital waste to an autoclave facility in Cavite. "These waste treatment systems "microwave, autoclave" are capable and effective in treating hospital waste. The DOH should actively present these non-incineration options to hospitals so that they are able to comply with the incineration ban and at the same time manage their hazardous waste," said Ferrer.
For hospitals in rural areas where no centralized treatment facility exists and where hospitals don't generate enough waste to warrant the purchase of their own treatment technology, the DOH finds acceptable septic tank disposal or burial.
Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) is an international coalition of hospitals and health care systems, medical professionals, community groups, health-affected constituencies, labor unions, environmental and environmental health organizations and religious groups. In the Philippines, HCWH successfully cooperated with the DOH for the non-incineration waste management program of the Ligtas Tigdas 2004 measles vaccination campaign. For more information see www.noharm.org. Press release
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