History and Victories
How HCWH Began
Health Care Without Harm began in 1996 after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified medical waste incineration as the leading source of dioxin, one of the most potent carcinogens.
In response to this serious problem, 28 organizations came together in Bolinas, California to form the coalition Health Care Without Harm (HCWH). Since then, HCWH has grown into a broad-based international coalition of hundreds of organizations in 52 countries, with offices in Arlington, VA, Brussels, Buenos Aires and Manila, which is the regional office for Southeast Asia.
HCWH-Southeast Asia began in 2003 with a vision of an environmentally sound health care system for the region.
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Success Stories
In just over five years, Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia has had a significant impact on major health systems, health care workers, medical device manufacturers, group purchasing organizations and government regulators. Our successes in Southeast Asia include:
- Virtually eliminating the market for mercury-based medical equipment in the United States, banning mercury thermometers in the European Union, and securing national policies to phase out mercury-based medical devices in the Philippines and Argentina, while working with thousands of hospitals across Latin America, Asia and Africa to switch to safer alternatives. HCWH-Southeast worked on the passing of an administrative order mandating the gradual phase-out of all mercury containing devices in all Philippine hospitals by 2010. Philippines is the 1st Southeast Asian and the 1st developing country to have a national legislation on mercury phase-out in hospitals.
- Closing thousands of medical waste incinerators and promoting safer technologies and waste management practices around the world. Philippines being the 1st country in the world to ban the use of incinerators and the 1st to do a documentation of a national government mass immunization project showed that disposal of waste is possible without incineration. HCWH-Southeast's Health Waste Assessment Project (HWAP) in Manila and Baguio, on the other hand, documents waste management practices of different hospitals that may serve as a model to other hospitals in the region and around the world.
- Creating new markets for safe and healthy products by leveraging the massive purchasing power of the health care sector.
- Initiating a Green Building program specifically geared to hospitals.
- Developing a Healthy Food project that is changing the way hospitals purchase food to support sustainable agricultural practices.
- Creating new programs to reduce the climate footprint of the health care sector.
- Influencing national governments towards health policies responsive to environmental health needs of a country. In the 2009 Philippine General Appropriations Act, P13.2 million was allocated for purchase of mercury thermometers in government-run hospitals in the country. More recently, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), the country's government health insurance with 16.46 million members and 68.67 million beneficiaries, announced that they will no longer accredit hospitals who continue to use mercury devices.
- Initiating action for the sound distribution of the national coffers and making sure that no country becomes a dumpsite of other country's rejects. In 2008, the Philippine Congress cancelled payment for a 1997 onerous loan on 26 medical waste incinerators from Austria that has been decommissioned following a law banning the use of incinerators nationwide. On that same year, P100 million were allocated for the purchase of an alternative medical waste treatment facility. In 2009, close to fifty congressmen signed the petition calling Austrian parliament to cancel the loan.
