NHS terminates contracts over waste disposal scandal
by Xavier Symons | 13 Oct 2018 |
The National Health Service has terminated several contracts with waste disposal provider Health Environmental Services (HES) after evidence emerged that hundreds of tonnes of hospital waste, including human body parts, had been allowed to accumulate in the company’s facilities.
HES controls approximately 20 percent of the waste disposal market in the UK, and has facilities across the United Kingdom.
According to NHS England documents obtained by the Health Service Journal, large amounts of various forms of human waste, including amputated limbs, as well as infectious liquids, cytotoxic waste produced during cancer treatment and dangerous pharmaceutical waste, have built up at HES’s five sites in England.
For example, there were 350 tonnes of waste in September at its waste disposal plant in Normanton, West Yorkshire, five times more than HES’s permitted level, the Health Service Journal reported.
Fifteen NHS Trusts in England have subsequently served notices to HES to terminate their contracts. However, HES continues to collect waste for more than 30 English hospitals and also carries out work across Scotland.
In a written statement to parliament, health minister Stephen Barclay said that new arrangements had been made with the outsourcing firm Mitie to replace the service provided by HES. “The primary concern was that too much waste was being held in a number of waste storage and treatment sites by [the] contractor”, Barclay said.
HES managing director Garry Pettigrew has denied all claims of mismanagement, telling the BBC in an interview that problems were caused by a shortage of incinerators rather than the company’s actions. He said that his company had been “vilified for providing an excellent service”.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Being a good editor requires a certain personality type: someone persnickety, obsessive, hawk-eyed and meticulous. Not being that sort of person myself, I can still appreciate their virtues. A good editor fusses about capitalisation, proper usage, consistent spelling, and the Oxford comma and loses sleep over knaves who cannot distinguish between “discrete” and “discreet”.
But there is one point on which the good editor and I agree: the enormity of writing “normalcy” when one means “normality”. I recently read in a not-to-be-named journal, “As the boundaries between human and ‘the other’, technological, biological and environmental, are eroded and perceptions of normalcy are challenged...” No. No. No. No. The word is “normality”.
The virus of “normalcy” has spread like a particularly pernicious strain of influenza through the media. A quick Google search brings up: “Nikki Haley's Departure Is Shocking Because Of Its Normalcy” and “Anger Recedes as Normalcy, Good Humor Mark Kavanaugh’s First Day on Supreme Court”.
Do you know who put “normalcy” on the map, so to speak? Warren G. Harding, who succeeded Woodrow Wilson in the White House. In 1920 the slogan of his campaign was “a return to normalcy”. The word should have died with his reputation as the worst of American presidents.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. And please don’t get me started on the misuse of “enormity” for “enormousness”.
But there is one point on which the good editor and I agree: the enormity of writing “normalcy” when one means “normality”. I recently read in a not-to-be-named journal, “As the boundaries between human and ‘the other’, technological, biological and environmental, are eroded and perceptions of normalcy are challenged...” No. No. No. No. The word is “normality”.
The virus of “normalcy” has spread like a particularly pernicious strain of influenza through the media. A quick Google search brings up: “Nikki Haley's Departure Is Shocking Because Of Its Normalcy” and “Anger Recedes as Normalcy, Good Humor Mark Kavanaugh’s First Day on Supreme Court”.
Do you know who put “normalcy” on the map, so to speak? Warren G. Harding, who succeeded Woodrow Wilson in the White House. In 1920 the slogan of his campaign was “a return to normalcy”. The word should have died with his reputation as the worst of American presidents.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. And please don’t get me started on the misuse of “enormity” for “enormousness”.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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