Manila — “Doctors nowadays are healing patients beyond hospital premises and the usual stethoscope,” said Merci Ferrer, Director of Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia (HCWH-SEA). “They are now looking at ten interconnected goals that complete the picture of a green and healthy health care.”
In the Philippine College of Physicians-Southern Luzon (PCP-SL) chapter Medical Ecology Summit, HCWH-SEA presented the 10 goals of the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals (GGHH), a conglomeration of hospitals, health systems, and health organizations committed to reducing ecological footprint and promoting public environmental health. GGHH represents the interest of over 2,500 hospitals spanning five continents.
The goals presented are: (1) leadership that prioritizes environmental health, (2) substitution of harmful chemicals with safe alternatives, (3) reduction, treatment and safe disposal of medical waste, (4) energy efficiency, (5) reduction of water consumption, (6) improved transportation system to reduce climate footprint and contribution to local pollution, (7) use of sustainably grown and healthy food, (8) safe disposal and management of pharmaceuticals, (9) support to green and healthy building designs and construction, and (10) purchase of safe and sustainable products.
“As a medical professional, we are involved in all the 10 agenda or we can choose to be involved in it,” said Dr. Carolyn Montano, PCP-SL President. “If we are to take an active role in improving practices of at least five of those agenda in all the hospital that we work with, we are doing ourselves a huge favor of healing our patients while preventing occurrence of more diseases.”
PCP-SL is the 1st health organization in the Philippines to join the GGHH Network.
“Hearing of the 10 goals of the GGHH, we knew that it is very much aligned to medical ecology, a goal which we have been pursuing at PCP-SL,” said Dr. Gina Nazareth, member of the Board of Regents of PCP National. “We believe that we are now at a time when healing is approached holistically. We look at the health of the patient, as well as the health of the environment in which we live in.”
“The challenge is for the doctors to bring the GGHH goals to their respective hospitals and share the information to other medical organizations,” said Ferrer. “In doing so, they are embracing a new definition of healing—one that encompasses healing of the planet.”
PCP-SL is part of the umbrella organization of internal medicine specialists in the Philippines. PCP, with its approximately 8,500 members has 80 chapters and 18 component and affiliate subspecialty societies.