Hospital lack waste treatment facilities

Fitri Wulandari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Most hospitals in urban areas have failed to develop adequate waste processing facilities, with hazardous substances still contained within waste posing a serious danger to surrounding residential areas.

Experts said that hospitals lacking proper waste disposal facilities could inadvertently pose a threat to the surrounding environment, especially people residing in densely populated areas.

Aloysius Mariono, secretary of the Indonesian Hospital Honorary and Ethics Council, cited the lack of space and funds as a frequent excuse for the shortage of facilities.

Many hospitals or clinics cannot afford modern waste processing or often invest their money in other areas, Aloysius told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a seminar on hospital services.

"They use simple and inexpensive technology. As a result, the waste is not processed properly and does not meet standards," Aloysius said.

Kesuma Halim, director of Adi Husada Undaan Wetan Hospital in Surabaya, also said during the seminar that many hospitals could not afford to allocate the space needed for waste processing facilities.

Many hospitals in cities are situated in residential housing or densely populated areas and therefore have limited space, he explained.

Toxic substances are often an overlooked component of hospital waste. It can consist of both solid and liquid waste.

Solid waste includes bandages, used syringes and human body tissue. Liquid includes blood, disinfectants and body fluids.

According to Kesuma, all health facilities are required to possess proper Liquid Waste Processing Installations (IPAL) to process liquid waste and an incinerator to destroy solid waste.

Incinerators are very expensive and, as an alternative, smaller hospitals often pay larger hospitals to incinerate their waste, Kesuma said.

Furthermore, an IPAL facility requires hundreds of square meters of space, which Kesuma said is difficult for hospitals in cities. Consequently, existing installations were not set up properly.

The end result is the processed liquid waste often containing hazardous substances when it is streamed down to nearby rivers or drains.

Kesuma suggested that if hospitals were unable to process there own waste properly, they should employ additional outsourcing methods by contracting a waste processing company.

Hospitals would then only need to provide temporary storage before the waste is transported to a processing plant.

Kesuma said hospitals would not be burdened with the need to set aside a large amount of money or allocate space, and the waste would also be processed according to standards.

Such practices are already found in hospitals in the Netherlands and Japan.

"The system encourages hospitals to manage their waste properly ... they don't have to sneak out and throw their waste away," Kesuma added.