WITH Cebu positioning itself as a medical tourism destination, stakeholders are looking to consolidate the rules governing proper disposal of hospital and hazardous waste.

Environmental Management Bureau Central Visayas director Allan Aranguez said there are still many gray areas in the various laws covering solid-waste management and toxic-waste disposal.

“We must admit there are still a lot of gray areas because we [EMB] and the Department of Health are going our separate ways. We need to coordinate more,” Aranguez said.

Although the laws and even the facilities are in place, Aranguez said there must be proper coordination so protocol—from waste throwing, packaging and transport and disposal—are synchronized.

The health department official in charge in monitoring waste disposal, Vivencio Ediza, said the rules and the procedures have been properly explained to hospitals but said the problem, especially for smaller government-owned hospitals, is in sustaining the program.

“It is sad to note that although all hospitals have segregation receptacles, they only stop there. There is no actual segregation of the waste,” Ediza added. He said, however, that the major hospitals who can afford waste-disposal facilities are strictly following the rules.

But hospital operators themselves are confused on which rules to follow, says Linda Alilin of Velez General Hospital, one of the biggest private hospitals in Metro Cebu.

“The Department of Health tells us we can have our septic vault, but we may have problems with DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resources] because of possible leachate seepage underground,” Alilin said.

The biggest hospital in the Central Philippines, the government-owned Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, said it is strict with chemical disinfection of their waste but admitted this could not be enough to properly dispose of the pathological and hazardous wastes like body parts, tissues, tumors and used medical supplies and chemicals.

“We are spending some P70,000 for our segregation programs alone, but sometimes this is not enough,”  waste control officer Ma. Victoria Villarojo said.

“Even the city’s garbage collectors are having problems. We are always getting the blame for not segregating the garbage [hazardous and domestic], but, in fact, it is the job of the waste producer to segregate the trash,” Dionisio Gualiza, of Cebu City’s department of public service, said.

The  only private hazardous-waste disposal operator in Cebu, Pollution Abatement Systems Specialists (PASS), insists autocleaving or microwave incineration as the only allowed method of disposing hazardous and pathological wastes. Ediza said the methods are still very expensive and “impractical.”

“You should meet with EMB because autocleaving and microwave is stated in the law,” PASS technical director Vicente Vosotros told Ediza.

Autocleaving is a method of subjecting waste to intense heat and high pressure to disinfect it. The waste is then sealed in receptacles and buried underground.

PASS, which was established in 2004 by a group of mechanical engineers, said only around 26 health establishments make use of their services.

According to a 2002 study, only 20 percent of Metro Cebu’s hospital and hazardous waste were properly disposed of.

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