By Melina Demetriou
THE HEALTH Ministry plans to establish a centre for the environmentally- friendly processing of hospital waste, Minister Frixos Savvides said yesterday.
Savvides admitted before the House Health Committee yesterday that hospital incinerators polluted the environment.
” Incinerators produce emissions harmless to health but damaging for the environment,”the minister said.
Savvides noted that private clinics also used state hospital incinerators because they could not get rid of their waste otherwise.
The minister told the committee the government indented to buy services from the private sector to establish a centre to process hospital waste without damaging the environment.
” This method of handling hospital waste respects the environment and is already applied in some European countries,”Savvides said.
” We have contacted some centres abroad which use such methods and we plan to buy services from them,”he added.
The minister explained that a national centre of this kind would collect and processes waste hospitals and clinics across the country.
He noted that the process mainly involved destruction of waste and in some cases recycling, ” which is now very much in fashion” .
It would cost the ministry a few million pounds to establish such a centre, Savvides said after the meeting, but declined to say what it would cost to run it.
Savvides noted the ministry would keep its current incinerators, even when the processing centre was up and running, ” in case we ever need them” .
Meanwhile, the House Health Committee asked Savvides to produce a report outlining all the kinds of environmental damage caused by his departments and to submit it to the committee.
Apart from hospital waste and incinerators’ emissions, deputies also cited radiation produced by machines used for radiotherapy.
The Committee said all ministers would be requested to come up with such reports.
” Ministers should order internal studies to identify causes of environmental damage and then suggest ways of eliminating it,”committee chairman George Lillikas of AKEL said.
” This is a great opportunity for me to do some self-evaluation and think of how best I can address these issues,”Savvides conceded.
