JEDDAH, 16 April 2003 — Environment pollution caused by improper or unhygienic disposal of medical waste in hospitals will become a thing of the past with a new project announced as part of Jeddah Bio City (JBC) yesterday.
JBC will be a complex for biotechnology and its supporting industries. The project is headed by Makkah Governor Prince Abdul Majeed as honorary chairman. Its seven other board members include Prince Faisal ibn Abdul Majeed.
The project, a collaboration between JBC and a leading French manufacturer of environmentally-friendly incinerators, will be ready within three months on Madinah Road here, JBC Chairman Dr. Sultan Bahabri said. “The SR20 million project is the first of a series of projects,” he said.
Bahabri and M. Philippe, director of the Paris-based ATI, took part in a signing ceremony here.
The French company is to install equipment for high temperature incineration of hospital waste. The incinerators will completely destroy waste including syringes, bandages, contaminated blood and fluid waste, and unusable medicines. They can also recuperate energy from industrial waste made of plastic, tar, resins, paints, and textiles and fabrics and be used for cremation of animal carcasses.
Bahabri said JBC was creating an environment to foster biotechnology-driven pharmaceutical research and development companies in collaboration with a major North American R&D organization based in Montreal.
“Better human health and environmental protection through the disposal of hazardous medical, biological, germicidal and chemical waste that conforms to international standards is the main priority of the project,” he said. Providing a capacity of 1,000 kg/hr, a comprehensive concept within international control by-laws for medical waste has been formulated.
The environmentally-friendly treatment plants are to be paired with training centers to teach staff safe procedures for the implementation of the programs. Specialized laboratories for the study of environmental pollutants will be set up in collaboration with scientific centers that specialize in this field.
“We developed the concept two years ago,” Bahabri said. “Today, developments, especially in medicine, are very rapid. So we’re constantly redefining our services.”
