An old malfunctioning incinerator at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) was at the centre of the spill of a number of vials containing blood, at the James A Tudor round-about today.
The blood was being transported by a private waste hauler to another government incinerator when it slipped off the vehicle. This led to police closing Hall’s Road, St Michael to vehicular traffic pending removal of the waste material which was done soon after by the same company. The company also sanitized the area where the spillage took place.
Speaking subsequently to Barbados TODAY, QEH Executive Chairman of the Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland said the incinerator at the QEH had been repaired in 2018 but had been given about two more years to remain operable.
“We are in this position of having to transport waste, but it is much extraordinary. Most hospitals as we do have some form of incineration or internal waste management. In our case, we incinerate medical waste and biomedical waste at the facility. However, our incinerator is 28 years old. We have attempted to extend the life of our incinerator at least four times, an incinerator usually has a shelf life of about ten to 15 years and certainly what we have been doing is working as assiduously as we can to extend the life of our incinerator.
Executive Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland says the hospital is in need of a new incinerator to burn medical and biomedical waste.
“The last time we would have sought to do that was in 2018 when we came to office and we recognized immediately that we were having incinerating issues and we would have gone back to the original manufacturer and they would have done a fix or a retrofitting that they said would have carried out about 10 to 12 months. They said that by the end of 2019, we are anticipating we are going to have challenges again and here we are in 2020 with the kinds of challenges that we have been having,” she said.
Bynoe-Sutherland said a new incinerator would cost Government about $10 million, and noted that the resources to acquire the equipment are not readily available at this time. She added that it would not be easy to get philanthropists to donate a new incinerator, saying that it will require strategic investment.
She said the QEH has approached the Ministry of Finance about sourcing avenues to attract special investment to purchase a new incinerator. The Executive Chairman noted that as Government develops its growth and development strategy acquiring an incinerator is being put forward as an initiative because of its national importance.
“We have put in our request to the Growth and Development Planning Committee so as they look to mobilize resources from external partners such as CDB [Caribbean Development Bank], IDB [Inter-American Development Bank], that they would perhaps be interested in giving a loan or special grant for an initiative of this nature,” Sutherland-Bynoe explained.
However, the Executive Chairman said today’s incident showed the need to get the incinerator which went down on July 7, back up and running, though the QEH acquired special permission from relevant environmental authorities to temporarily use the smaller incinerators at the Grantley Adams International Airport and Bridgetown Port.
She said local company Cole’s Engineering is leading a team of other complimentary services to retrofit QEH’s incinerator to extend the life as far along as it can go.
“We are anticipating that our incinerator will be back up by August 12 and until then we are going to have to be moving the waste from the hospital on a daily basis. Every day we generate about six tonnes of waste coming from across the hospital, and across the polyclinic system. And we even do some incineration for Non-Governmental-Organisations (NGOs) and private sector businesses to make sure that medical waste is kept and secured as carefully as we can do,” she said.
“We are taking initiatives to help us to reduce waste and better manage the waste we have at the hospital. But some wastes, which are the waste you would have had today from our labs, are waste that are unavoidable. Whenever anyone gets a blood test, the lab takes a sample of that blood test, and then that blood test remaining items are disposed of,” she added.
The hospital boss indicated that QEH has confidence in the company moving the waste from the hospital, and stressed that they are certified in the transport and disposal of medical waste. While she described today’s incident as most unfortunate, she said it does not diminish confidence in the contractor.
“We just ask for them to really be extra careful in how the waste is packaged on removal from the facility and to really take all safeguards during the transport so that we don’t have a repeat of this unfortunate incident.
“The private contractor is going to provide us with a full report. We will review their practices of packaging and transport. But we are satisfied that having worked with them for over 31 years that it is a responsible contractor and that this was simply an accident,” she said. anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb
