In a circular issued Monday by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the environmental protection departments at all levels were ordered to strengthen administration and supervision over medical sewage and wastes in the hospitals with SARS patients and suspected patients, in a bid to stop further pollution and cross-infection.

The circular points out that the hospitals with SARS patients and suspected patients are, in particular, to be supervised and administered for the possible SARS transmission.

The environmental protection authorities are to offer assistance to those hospitals which are short of medical sewage disposal equipment and incapable of disposing the sewage. The medical wastes discharged from the hospitals should be incinerated locally. For the medical institutes without medical wastes disposal equipment, the environmental protection departments are expected to help build the equipment or designate temporary incineration spots.

According to the circular, the medical sewage needed transporting should be collected by professional departments and disposed properly. Meanwhile, the environmental protection staff who will work on the spot should safeguard themselves in the light of the requirements by public health departments.

Once the circular was issued, the local environmental protection authorities took immediate actions to strengthen supervision and administration over medical sewage and wastes, offering service and guarantee to public health departments.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection and its affiliated bureaus have adopted a series of measures to prevent environmental pollution. For instance, all the medical wastes would be primarily collected, sanitized and sealed by professionals, then transported in closed vehicles to designated spots to be incinerated.

Moreover, Beijing Ditan Hospital increased the amount of sodium chlorate in the sewage disposal, and collected solid wastes in terms of classification which would be incinerated together after sanitization.

The Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection advanced the idea that the medical sewage around the whole city would be considered most dangerous and strictly controlled accordingly. To control the possible SARS transmission due to medical wastes, the relevant units should collect the wastes beyond the rush hour; the transporting routes should keep away from populous areas; and the wastes should be incinerated as soon as they arrive at destinations. In the hospitals, especially those treating SARS patients, capped and closed containers should be used to collect medical wastes. The sewage disposal facilities should be kept constantly working.

Besides, some other places around China have also taken strict steps to step up the supervision and administration over medical sewage and wastes, including Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Chongqing, Taiyuan, Hubei, Yunnan and Hohhot.

(Xinhua News Agency April 29, 2003)