Untreated hospital waste overflowing in Vietnam

Municipal environmental authorities announced last week that just one-third of the city's 139 hospitals had proper wastewater treatment systems.

 Bui Cach Tuyen, head of the Vietnam Environmental Administration, told the German Press Agency dpa that hospital waste was "having harmful effects on the environment." He said the wastewater could contain radioactive materials from cancer treatment and X-ray machines, as well as materials contaminated with infectious diseases.

 The problem is widespread in Vietnam, not just in Ho Chi Minh City, authorities said.

 "Hospitals in cities are having trouble treating wastewater, while hospitals in rural areas are having trouble disposing of solid wastes," said the Ministry of Health's chief inspector, Tran Quang Trung.

 Trung said the ministry had not produced a full report on hospital waste, but acknowledged that it was affecting the environment.

 "We are aware of this problem, but the problem is that there is not enough money to build waste treatment systems in old hospitals," he said.

 Dr Truong Tan Minh, a health official in the province of Khanh Hoa, said several hospitals there were still discharging wastewater directly into sewers. He said it might be years before treatment facilities were built.

 The state-run Vietnam News on Wednesday quoted Tran Nguyen Hien, head of Ho Chi Minh City's environmental management department, as saying that fining hospitals which lacked wastewater treatment facilities would not resolve the problem.

 "Many would just pay the few million dong (less than 1,000 dollars) for the fine, rather than spending billions, even tens of  billions, of dong to set up a new system," he said.//dpa