Stop Toxic Debt!

In 1995, the Philippine Department of Health (DoH), responding to public criticism and negative coverage in the popular press regarding the improper disposal of infectious medical waste in the country, launched a project to improve the management of medical waste by DoH-controlled hospitals in the country.

Dubbed "The Austrian project for the establishment of waste disposal facilities and upgrading of the medical equipment standard in DoH hospitals," the project's key component was the purchase of 26 medical waste incinerators called Multizon, which were manufactured by Liechtenstein-based Hoval and were supplied to the DoH by VAMED, an Austrian company. The project was financed by a loan from Bank Austria Aktiengessellschaft.

The incinerators were distributed throughout the various DoH-controlled hospitals nationwide. However, within a couple of years of operation, the incinerators started eliciting complaints from various groups. In 1999, the Philippine legislature also passed the Clean Air Act, which banned the incineration of medical waste starting in 2003.

The DoH, in cooperation with the WHO, subjected the incinerators to a comprehensive emission test, the results of which showed egregiously high emissions. In one incinerator tested, dioxin emissions were eight hundred seventy times the limit set by the Clean Air Act.

The incinerators were shut down by the DoH in 2003, but the Philippines is allocating roughly US$2 million a year to pay for the loan connected with the failed project. The last payment is to fall due in 2014.

HCWH-Southeast Asia is leading the campaign to cancel the Austrian loan connected with the medical waste incinerators. See the report, Toxic Debt: The Onerous Austrian Legacy of Medical Waste in the Philippines.