Baguio to clean-up hospital wastes

September 18, 2008

BAGUIO TO CLEAN-UP HOSPITAL WASTES

Baguio City - The Baguio City Environment and Parks Management Office (CEPMO), Baguio hospital administrators, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH)-Southeast Asia and Baguio Councilor Perlita (Pinky) Chan-Rondez, in a meeting yesterday on disposal of treated infectious hospital wastes, agreed that a centralized treatment facility is the immediate and long-term solution to Baguio hospital wastes disposal.

Setting-up the treatment facility--from approval of the City Government to bidding to procurement--will take approximately 75 days.

Since July this year, chemically-treated hospitals wastes from Baguio hospitals are not being collected by City Government for the lack of waste treatment facility for chemical and hazardous wastes in the Metro Clark Waste Management Facility. This forced the Baguio hospitals to take care of the final disposal of their treated wastes.

Faye Ferrer of HCWH-SEA, said that chemically-treating infectious wastes and disposing them within the hospital premises is a short-term solution. “Considering that Baguio does not have the luxury of land, we need a long-term solution.”

Following proposal from HCWH-SEA, the local officials present agreed that it is the local government’s role to purchase a treatment facility that will service all hospitals in Baguio and even nearby hospitals.

HCWH-SEA cited autoclave which uses steam to treat cultures and stocks, sharps, materials contaminated with blood and limited amounts of fluid, isolation and surgery wastes, laboratory wastes (excluding chemical wastes), and soft waste. An autoclave package[1] costs around P1 million.

“The City Government is currently paying P500,000 per day or P17.5 million per month to transport its wastes,” said Rondez. She added that P1 million for the autoclave is not a big amount if this will solve the problem of hospital waste disposal.

A study of 7 Baguio hospitals, approximated the volume of infectious waste produced in a month to 9,708 kg.

“An autoclave treating 50 kg of waste per hour and running for 10 hours a day can treat 17,500 kg of infectious wastes in a month. This is bigger than the amount of infectious wastes produced by Baguio hospitals thus the City Government may even extend its service to nearby hospitals,” said Chel Santos of HCWH-SEA.

The hospital administrators likewise agreed that for their part, each hospital will be responsible to transport the infectious waste to the former Irisan dumpsite where the autoclave is proposed to be set-up. From Irisan, the local government will handle the transport of waste to the proposed Baguio residual area.

The Baguio hospitals headed by the Philippine Hospital Association-Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) President Dionisio Claridad, Jr., MD, MHA yesterday sent a petition to the City Government to certify the autoclave project urgent and thus expedite its approval.

Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) is a global coalition of 473 organizations in more than 50 countries working to protect health by reducing pollution in health care sector. For more information, visit www.noharm.org.

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[1] An autoclave package includes Environmental Compliance Certificate, Standard Operating Procedures, Contingency Plan (risk management), One Hazard Spill Kit, One roll of Sterility Indicator Tape, Ten 55 liter yellow infectious waste plastic bins, 10 rolls of high density polyethylene bin liners, 5 A3 which bin to throw in laminated posters, 1 day staff training program for the operators, 2 hour staff training “Educate to Segregate” workshop.