"We fear that the disposal of medical waste through on-site incinerators will be a cure which is far worse than the disease itself"

—Ravi Agarwal, Indian Campaign Against Medical Waste Incineration

Stop Construction of Medical Waste Incinerators / India - Victory

The World Bank plans to "cure" India's problem of medical waste disposal with the construction of hospital waste incinerators throughout a three-state area. But the incinerators will belch out deadly toxins - dioxins, mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium and toxic ash. Better - even cheaper - waste disposal technologies are readily available. Indian advocates for the environment and public health ask Global Response members to persuade the Bank to stop funding incinerators and to install safe waste disposal technologies instead.

Medical waste is a serious problem in India, where ragpickers sift through contaminated hospital garbage to recover the glass, paper, plastic and metal that they can sell for recycling. To protect them and others who might easily find and reuse contaminated needles and other medical supplies, a safe system of disposing of medical waste is urgently needed.

But the incinerators that the World Bank plans to construct will create MORE toxic pollution. "The World Bank should not promote the transfer of the worst Western technologies to India and the rest of the world," says Gary Cohen, a coordinator of Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), a coalition of over 100 North American organizations working to reform the environmental practices of the health care industry.

Noting that hospital waste incinerators are among the top sources of dioxins released into the environment, HCWH says it is "unacceptable for hospitals to be contributing to cancer on the outside while treating it on the inside."

Instead of incinerating their waste, hospitals should:

1. phase out the use of PVC plastics and mercury products; safer products are available at competitive prices;
2. reduce, segregate, reuse and recycle as much waste as possible;
3. shred contaminated waste for volume reduction and to avoid reuse, and then sterilize the material using high-temperature steam or microwaving before disposal in landfills.

In India, a coalition of environmentalists and public health advocates, the Indian Campaign Against Medical Waste Incineration, is demanding that the World Bank implement these safe technologies instead of building harmful incinerators. They are supported by the World Bank's own South Asia office, which recommended that hospitals in India segregate and decontaminate medical waste at source rather than use "imported high-technology incinerators that are expensive to purchase and difficult to maintain." Tawhid Nawaz, task manager for the Bank's project, agreed to look into their criticisms of incineration and the advantages of alternative technologies. In the mean time, the incinerator project is approved and some funds have already been dispersed -- so immediate corrective action by the World Bank is needed.

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