Alarming practice

Last June 30, channel 7’s Imbestigador featured a very serious and alarming practice of health care waste disposal of some major hospitals in Metro Cebu. Waste collectors up to the end disposal of these medical wastes where scavengers, children and adults alike, are virtually exposed to the hazards these toxic and highly infectious health care wastes bring.  Syringes with needles and IV tubings with blood, human body parts, gallons of blood and innards welcome scavengers as they tear open these plastic bags that contain highly contagious and infectious pathogens.

It is highly possible that same practices of these improper handling and disposal of health care waste are happening in other parts of the country. Imagine what kind of health hazard and outbreaks of different infectious diseases this kind of improper health care waste disposal may bring.

Those hospitals could not have been unaware of the dangers of these practices because the Health Care Waste Manual of the DOH states: “Human excreta are the principal vehicle for the transmission of a spread of a wide range of communicable diseases, and excreta from health care patients may be expected to contain far higher concentration of pathogens, and therefore are far more infectious, than excreta from households. This underlines the prime importance of providing access to more adequate sanitation in every health care establishment. The health care establishment should be ideally connected to a sewerage system”.  As seen in the footages of the hospitals featured, all of their wastes go direct to the dump site.

Also in one of the interviews, one hospital representative claimed that before they dispose of their infectious wastes, they chlorinate it to disinfect.  PASS or Pollution Abatement Systems Specialists Inc., Cebu’s first and only Autoclave Hospital Waste Treatment Facility has suffered huge losses over time since the refusal of hospitals in Cebu to avail of their services and is in danger of folding up. PASS uses autoclave, a waste treatment alternative widely used in the US, and should there be alternatives available in the area, like PASS, hospitals should avail of these type of facilities and minimize chlorine disinfection as stated in the manual where “the use of strong disinfectants should be minimized when there are alternatives”.

Metro Cebu’s hospitals’ non compliance on the DOH health care waste manual as shown in Imbestigador’s featured segment is very much an understatement.  In fact, the manner of the turn-over of wastes from the hospitals down to the final disposal areas is an apparent disrespect for the occupational safety of its workers, the garbage collectors and eventually the waste pickers waiting at the dumpsites.

Proper health care waste management is possible and doable, even profitable as modeled by the four hospitals that we, Health Care Without Harm, an active member of the Eco Waste Coalition, did for its initial hospital waste assessment project. There are alternatives available for treatment of these wastes before they end up in our dumpsites. Proper segregation can cut down the size of the generated infectious wastes of hospitals, even cover treatment costs and an efficient health care waste management team in the hospitals can prove to be very helpful in achieving this goal. —  CHEL SANTOS, Health Care Without Harm, SEA, 330 Eaglecourt Condominium, 26 Matalino St., Diliman QC