Northern Samar Hospitals to Promote Environmental Health

Catarman City, Northern Samar — "An unexplored beauty in the Visayas, Northern Samar poses a great potential when it comes to environmental health," said Faye Ferrer, Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia (HCWH-SEA) Program Officer for Mercury.

In a province-wide forum on environmental health with special focus on elimination of mercury-containing devices in hospitals, Ferrer said that the dangers of mercury in hospitals do not match the pristine environment of Northern Samar.

Mercury is a neurotoxin. It is fatal when inhaled and harmful if absorbed through the skin. High doses of vapors released by thermometer breakage may cause lung damage, while at lower doses it is harmful to the kidney and the nervous, digestive, respiratory and immune systems.

Although the Philippines does not have statistics of mercury releases, in the US, for example, mercury fever thermometers contributed 15 metric tons of mercury to solid waste landfill annually. "Now imagine our old hospital policy here of one patient, one thermometer," said Ferrer.

Once mercury is released in the atmosphere, it is transported to the rest of the globe. "You can do the math of how much our hospitals are contributing to mercury pollution."In September 2008, the Department of Health (DoH) issued Administrative Order 21 which aims for the gradual phase-out of all mercury-containing devices in all Philippine hospitals by 2010. This is supported globally by the World Health Organization (WHO) which has an initiative with HCWH aiming to substitute mercury-based medical devices by 2017.

"The reason for this forum is we want to prevent further mercury pollution through the use of non-mercurial devices and we want the hospitals in Northern Samar to take on a leadership role," said Ferrer. "We are also calling on the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to provide an intermediate storage for the phased-out mercury devices."

"And beyond the mercury issue and Northern Samar's project on solid waste and a goal of a zero waste province, HCWH-SEA also hopes to make Northern Samar's hospitals model of good waste management," said Cris Parungao, the group's Program Officer for the Promotion of Best Hospital Practices.

"We hope for an all-encompassing zero waste project in the province that includes proper health care waste management." In 2007, HCWH-SEA conducted a preliminary Hospital Waste Assessment Project (HWAP) in one provincial and 8 district hospitals in the province.

"The aim of the project is to document the good practices of the hospitals in the proper management of their health care waste and to come up with baseline data on the total health care waste being generated in one locality," said Parungao.

"We have seen good results in the assessment but we want to move forward and encourage all hospitals in the province to keep up the good practices and improve the others," she added.

"With this, Northern Samar hospitals may join the lines of best hospitals in the Southeast Asia region."

Health Care Without Harm is an international coalition of more than 500 organizations in 53 countries, working to transform the health care sector worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. Visit the HCWH website for more information.