FOR DISPOSAL: Sanitary workers in protective suits prepare disposing medical waste from Quezon Medical Center in Lucena City on Friday. (Photo courtesy of DR. ROLANDO PADRE)
LUCENA CITY, Quezon, Philippines — The Quezon Medical Center (QMC) here has started disposing of medical waste piled up inside its compound on Friday amid complaints of nearby residents.
“The contractors will clear the waste storage facility of all uncollected waste within two weeks of continuous operations,” assured Dr. Rolando Padre, QMC director, in a statement late on Friday.
Padre also publicly apologized to the affected residents who aired their complaints through media outlets here.
He said they were still processing the payment for their waste disposal contractor when the complaints were reported in the media.
Annual budget
Padre explained that the piles of hospital waste at the back of the QMC compound were “the result of the hospital’s inability to sustain the disposal process amid increased hazardous hospital waste generation during the peak of COVID-19 admissions in the third quarter of last year.”
He said QMC collected about 400 kilograms of hospital waste every day. The hospital engaged licensed contractors to transport the waste to a treatment facility.
Padre said they had difficulties in paying fees for the contractors during the last quarter of last year because of the non-passage of the 2021 annual budget of the provincial government.
“As a result, they temporarily stopped collecting from our temporary storage facility. Waste collected from the different areas of the hospital were instead packed directly in secured plastic drums and kept in the [storage] area,” he explained.
In August last year, Gov. Danilo Suarez filed a complaint in Malacañang against eight provincial board members for preventing the passage of the province’s P3.8-billion budget for 2021, which contained its COVID-19 response fund.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government acted on the complaint and suspended the eight officials for 60 days, effective Nov. 11, 2021, paving the way for the approval of both the 2021 and 2022 budgets of the province.
Segregated
Padre said they were able to pay the first tranche due to their waste collection contractors on Friday. The two contractors have also just completed securing the permits for the transportation of the waste to the treatment facility outside of the province, he added.
Padre also assured that pathologic waste was not stored nor mixed with hazardous hospital waste.
“There is a separate procedure to dispose of placentas, amputated limbs, surgical specimens, and the like, and they cannot be the cause of the foul odor in the area,” he stressed.
He said QMC sanitary workers segregated waste materials at the source and applied disinfecting solutions before these were packed in color-coded plastic bags. Once the collected materials were packed, these would be sealed and transported to the temporary storage facility.
The pile of plastic bags filled with hazardous waste was also regularly disinfected while waiting to be collected by the contractor, Padre explained.
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