Carers told to dispose of clinical waste in patients’ dustbins

DISTRICT nurses are being told to dispose of bandages and other clinical waste in patients’ own dustbins in the wake of the NHS body parts scandal.

A memo sent to carers tells them to use “sandwich bags and bin liners” to wrap up dressings, gloves, aprons and other clinical waste. The nurses are specifically told not to use yellow or orange clinical waste bags, which cannot be taken away with household waste. Bodily fluids, including blood, are to be flushed down a patient’s lavatory “for a temporary period” in what is described as “an alternative disposal process”.

The advice was sent out after the Department of Health discovered that hundreds of tons of body parts and other toxic waste are being stockpiled by a contractor hired to dispose of it.

Last night it emerged that concerns about Healthcare Environmental Services (HES) were raised almost a year ago, but ministers claim to have been unaware of the problem until August.

A criminal investigation has been launched into the failure of HES to carry out its legal duty to dispose of the body parts and other hazardous waste.

Hospitals are now being told to store clinical waste on site while new waste disposal contractors are hired. Clinical waste is also being disposed of in household refuse and down lavatories to reduce the amount that has to be removed by care staff. A memo sent to district nurses from one trust in the north of England – which has a waste disposal contract with HES – tells them that “wastes that you have defined as non-infectious can be disposed of in the patient’s home waste bin” if they comply with a list that includes bandages, dressings, plasters, disposable gloves and aprons.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said it had asked NHS England to “urgently” look into the instructions issued by the trust in question. The spokesman added: “The NHS sets strict clinical waste standards and the Government has not instructed any trust to deviate from those.”

Sara Gorton, of public sector union Unison, said: “Safety guidelines are in place for good reasons – to protect the people being looked after and the staff giving care. If the advice on disposal is having to be altered because of contracting blunders the public will understandably be horrified.”

Concerns about HES’S ability to fulfil its NHS contracts were first raised last year by a rival firm, Stericycle, which had bid against HES. Stericycle, which bid £479,999 for a contract that HES won with a bid of £300,000, claimed during a judicial review of the bidding process that the HES bid was “abnormally low”. HES was approached for comment.