EU funds to pay for new unit to sterilise medical waste

EUROPEAN Union funds will pay for a new unit to sterilise medical waste from TRNC state and private hospitals, health centres, clinics and dentists, Health Minister Filiz Besim disclosed this week.

The announcement came more than three years after Cyprus Today revealed that an earlier unit established by the EU to deal with the country’s potentially hazardous clinical debris had broken down, leading to the waste being collected by dustmen from normal rubbish bins and dumped, untreated, at the Güngör tip.

Former health minister Faiz Sucuoğlu said last month before leaving office that EU officials had promised the facility in the grounds of Lefkoşa State Hospital would be repaired and back in action “within weeks”.

His successor Dr Besim, however, said this week: “It is in no condition to be fixed, therefore it will be replaced by the EU within the next month. We have already taken measures for the new system, including making provision for its personnel of two drivers and three others who will be recruited.

“The existing situation is a danger to the environment so the new unit will be put into action as soon as it arrives, in order to sterilise medical waste before it is consigned to the Güngör facility.”

As reported by this newspaper last month, neurology expert Dr İlker İpekdal described the three-year practice of dustmen removing medical waste, which is then squashed into bin wagons with compressors before being dumped at the landfill site, as “a huge health risk”.