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Wastes of hospitals pollute underground water, threaten citizens’ health
25-8-2017
The president of the Lebanese Farmers Association, Antoine Howayek, revealed yesterday that many of the crops and farmlands in Lebanon are irrigated by water contaminated with sewers and toxic and infectious discharges of hospitals. The crisis is not new but in fact has reached alarming levels, Howayek told An Nahar newspaper, cautioning against an imminent disaster. Irrigation water, and therefore all the vegetables and greens consumed by the Lebanese people are polluted. Howayek pointed out that water quality analysis conducted by the Association has shown that many hospitals, namely government-run hospitals, tend to dispose of their sanitary sewerage in rivers. The case of the Litani River and Al Jouz River in Batroun are good examples. There are 10 hospitals along Litani’s riverbank alone, he said, warning that the situation in Akkar and other regions is not better. The wastes of hospitals are more hazardous to health than the drainage of regular households, Howayek said. He demanded the government to treat this matter as a priority in order to lift the harmful risks of the Lebanese people who are infected with dozens of cancerous and gastrointestinal diseases. He appealed to the President of the Republic to make compulsory the treatment of the crisis if involved authorities failed to act. He also called on the health ministry to ban hospitals of dumping their wastewater discharge in the rivers and waterways, and to ask state-run and private hospitals to treat their sanitary waste before dumping. In this respect, Al-Nahar learned from sources close to the Ministry, that the latter will assign doctors of the districts to conduct the necessary analysis tests and make tours of inspection to hospitals and rivers to this effect. (Annahar 25 August 2017)
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- العربية
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