Health professionals urge ‘no exemption’ for sector at INC-5.2 talks

A coalition of global healthcare groups, led by Health Care Without Harm, has called for an end to the exemption of healthcare from any global plastics treaty.

Health Care Without Harm and its partners, including the World Medical Association and the International Council of Nurses – which together represent over 48 million health professionals – have submitted an open letter to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) talks taking place in Geneva, calling for the removal of exemptions for the healthcare sector, arguing that the sector ‘cannot be given a free pass’.

Plastic waste

According to Will Clark, director of international supply chains at Health Care Without Harm, the health care sector generates 15 million tonnes of plastic waste every year.

“That’s the equivalent of seven shopping bags for every patient who walks through a hospital door,” he said. “Yet, there are already proven, safe alternatives, such as reusable and reprocessed medical products that reduce plastic waste without compromising patient safety.

“If the Global Plastics Treaty exempts healthcare from its resolution, it sets a very dangerous precedent – one that both undermines environmental progress and the very mission of healthcare to ‘do no harm.”

The treaty negotiations currently include proposals to allow broad exemptions for healthcare, however the signatories believe that such exemptions risk ‘undermining the treaty’s ambition’.

The signatories also cal for the promotion of alternatives to plastic within the healthcare sector, including safer materials, reusable systems, non-toxic product design, and sustainable waste management.

‘Responsibility and opportunity’

“The health sector has both the responsibility and opportunity to take the lead on sustainability,” added Howard Catton, CEO at the International Council of Nurses (ICN). “That’s why ICN, along with the signatories of this letter, is advocating for no blanket exemption of health care in the treaty on plastic pollution and instead calling for the treaty to include special consideration of the health sector. Protecting human health must go hand in hand with protecting the health of our planet.”

Elsewhere, Dr. Ashok Philip, president of the World Medical Association, noted that exempting healthcare from global action on plastics “is not only shortsighted – it contradicts our core ethical obligation to protect health.” Read more here.

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