The story of the Sambhavna Clinic, a non-profit holistic health clinic in Bhopal, India, built to treat those injured by the Union Carbide toxic gas release in 1984. enlarge video
PPCB Advises Doctors to Replace Mercury-based Equipment
Collaborating with HCWH's India Partner, Toxics Link, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) Chairman K S Pannu has asked doctors to replace mercury-based medical equipment with non-mercury devices.
"Mercury-based thermometers, blood pressure measuring devices and mercury-laden amalgam for dental treatment should be replaced with non-mercury based equipment," Pannu said.
In a letter written to the MD of Punjab Health System Corporation, the Director Health and Family Welfare, the IMA President and the State President National Integrated Medical Association, Pannu said mercury was one of the most toxic natural elements. "It is a global contaminant and neurotoxin and has an adverse effect on the human nervous system and other body parts," he said.
Mercury is associated with the health care industry.It is used in thermometer, blood pressure measuring instruments, esophageal dilators and dental amalgam.
The World Health Organization has issued a policy paper on mercury in health care calling for short, medium and long-term strategies to address the problem. The WHO in collaboration with the Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), an International NGO, has set up an objective that by 2017 it shall phase out the demand for mercury containing fever thermometers and sphygmomanometers by at least 70 per cent, letter said.
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