Up to 70% of wastewater treatment facilities at Vietnamese hospitals are substandard, seriously polluting the environment and doing harm to local people’s health, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said.
Vietnam now has nearly 1,200 hospitals and over 200 health facilities, preventive medicine centers and pharmaceutical producers nationwide. However, up to 63% of Vietnam hospitals have yet built medical wastewater treatment systems. The ministry estimated that local hospitals and health facilities discharge 350 tons of medical solid waste and over 150,000cu.m of wastewater into the environment per day. Only half of total hospitals classify and collect medical solid waste meeting the regulations on medical waste management set by the ministry. The government targets to collect and treat all toxic medical solid waste from health facilities nationwide by 2025, including 70% will be treated meeting the environmental standard, versus 60% currently. As many as 50 tons of hazardous medical solid waste will be discharged per day by 2015 at medical centers and hospitals. The figure is expected to reach 90 tons by 2025, the ministry predicted. To ease the situation, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will work with the MoH to find out measures to mitigate medical waste-caused environmental pollution as well as build treatment systems at hospitals in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in the next three years. The Word Bank has decided to lend the MoH $150 million for a hospital waste management support project, aiming to help raise the quality of healthcare services in north-central provinces and contribute to improving the lives and health of the locals, especially the poor and the near-poor. (Ha Noi Moi – New Hanoi June 6 p2)
