Tuguegarao City — As the world gathers for the World Cancer Day, Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia (HCWH-SEA) in a regional conference on mercury phase-out and proper health care waste management in Cagayan Valley calls on all health care workers to unite and let their voices be heard in the May 2010 elections.
“Our task is to get more and more signatures in every regional conference. With each signature, we are turning green health care sector into a vibrant green health care.”
“Health care workers primary duty is to provide guidance on proper health to the people. However, this duty must not stop there. We need to provide a situation where health will thrive and survive,” said Merci Ferrer, Executive Director of HCWH-SEA. “We need the initiative of health care sector and the support of our local and national leaders.”
“This 2010, we envision a greener health care for the Philippines.”
The Green Health Care Covenant
HCWH-SEA in the Green Health Covenant, is enjoining all health care workers and all Filipinos to encourage their candidates to put in their agenda the many facets of a green health care.
The Covenant is asking support for a Mercury-Free Philippine health care in line with the DoH Administrative Order (AO) 21 mandating the gradual phase-out of mercury in all Philippine health care facilities and institutions.
Signatories likewise pledge to encourage candidates to work for proper health care waste management acknowledging its importance to general waste management leading to a zero waste Philippines; to recognize dangerous chemicals in health care and work towards regulating its use and disposal; and to work towards a health setting responsive to climate change.
The traveling Covenant, which is also electronically distributed in Green Health Covenant Web, gathered more than 600 signatures from the 1st regional conference in Ilocos Region.
“Our task is to get more and more signatures in every regional conference. With each signature, we are turning green health care sector into a vibrant green health care.”
Greening Cagayan Valley
Housing 39 government and 44 private hospitals of the 1,847 hospitals in the country, the health care sector in Cagayan Valley can do much greening.
“Greening of the health care sector is not new to the region,” said Ferrer. “Ask St. Paul Hospital (Tuguegarao). You have here one of the best hospitals in our list.”
St. Paul Hospital in Tuguegarao is among the sixteen hospitals who received the 1st Do No Harm Award for mercury phase-out from HCWH-SEA last September 2009.
Do No Harm Award recognizes outstanding hospitals, health care workers, institutions and communities in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries who are leading the way to a healthier environment.
“SPH is among the 1st hospitals in the country to phase-out mercury,” said Ferrer. Other initiatives for green health care include proper waste segregation, recycling, composting and use of safer chemicals in their facilities.
“With so much happening around us, the health sector needs to take a stand and say: we are for green and healthy future. It may start with green health care."
Starting from home
Greening the health care sector may not be that easy.
In a 2004 US study, two major laboratories found a total of 287 industrial chemicals and pollutants in the umbilical cord blood from 10 babies. The umbilical cord when checked after it was cut contained pesticides, consumer products ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline and garbage. Of the chemicals detected, 180 cause cancer, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests.
Years ago, scientists thought that the placenta prevents the developing baby from most chemicals.
“We at the health care sector are also guilty of using some of these toxic chemicals. We call this human body burden, defined as the pollution in people that permeates everyone in the world, including babies in the womb,” said Ferrer.
“We know that we cannot change everything overnight. But we will do this one step at a time. We will start from our home where we live and our second home—health care facilities and institutions,” said Ferrer.
AO 21 aims to clean the healthy care sector of mercury devices by September 2010. Efforts on other green health initiatives are already underway in many of the hospitals in the country.