INTERVIEW
Conquering the hurdles in green hospital goals
Procurement is amongst the 10-goal GGHH framework to achieve net-zero by 2050.
M
ost hospitals spurred medical innovations on saving lives but missed an opportunity to protect the world where patients live. But not Buddhist Dalin Tzuchi General Hospital of Taiwan, which is one of the 1,500 members of the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals (GGHH) community. Ming-nan Lin, vice superintendent and director of family medicine at Buddhist Dalin Tzuchi General Hospital of Taiwan, spoke with Healthcare Asia, to discuss how they followed the comprehensive framework under 10 GGHH goals to improve their greenhouse goal program and could lead them to achieve a net-zero goal by 2050, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5°C by enforcing strict climate policies and innovations. Amongst the 10 goals that they follow are leadership, chemicals, waste, energy, water, transportation, food, pharmaceuticals, buildings, and purchasing. For Lin, he said their hospital encountered challenges in the procurement of sustainable medical equipment with the absence of a framework that would calculate the carbon footprint of such tools. To prove his point, Lin mentioned that there is a call to replace even inhalers for asthma patients and anaesthetic gas—which contributes to global warming 10,000 more than carbon dioxide—with more eco-friendly options as both hospital care needs emit greenhouse gases that will cause global warming. Although difficult, Lin noted that they learn from hospital practices, such as in the UK, to calculate the carbon footprint from the transportation of patients to medical devices being used for treating their patients. What drew you to joining the GGHH network and realising its goals? In the year 2012, when Taiwan held the Health Promoting Hospital (HPH) international conference, we had a preconference for green hospitals. That is the year we knew about the GGHH initiative that is from Taiwan’s Health Care Without Harm. The GGHH network and Health Care Without Harm released the GGHH 10-goal manual, in which we are agreeing that, as a hospital, we want to reduce the environmental impacts besides taking care of the patients. We also want to work on our environmental impacts; and the GGHH 10 goals let us check up on the 10 greenhouse growth domains. In 2012, our hospital helped our government to write the book. We call it the Taiwan Green Hospital Experience, which is called Green Hospital Green Life in Green Planet. Then, we shared our experiences. But the GGHH 10 goal provides us a comprehensive framework that we can check on our greenhouse goal 10
HEALTHCARE ASIA
Ming-nan Lin, Vice Superintendent and Director of Family Medicine, Buddhist Dalin Tzu Chi General Hospital of Taiwan
program so that we can investigate, we can audit what we have done in our hospital and also share our experience to the other hospitals.
In Taiwan, we don’t have quite a comprehensive system to identify the carbon footprint of each product
Amongst the 10 GGHH goals, which were the easiest ones to achieve? As for me, I think that leadership is the easiest because we got very strong support from the hospital and also from the foundation. We belong to Tzu Chi Fund Medical Foundation, and Tzu Chi Foundation is chartered and founded by our Dharma Master Cheng Yen. From the beginning of the foundation, she told us that the mission of our foundation is not only to help people, but reducing the environmental impacts and also cherishing the environment. The various strong support from our foundation and also the hospital, which can lead us to arrange many greenhouse programs, and then also training our colleagues, and also investing in energy reducing facilities, and also the greenhouse buildings. I think that the strong support from the leadership is the way that we think we were, it is one of the easiest goals that we can achieve. Which of these goals were quite difficult to reach? It is the procurement. In Taiwan, we don’t have quite a comprehensive system to identify the footprint of each product so we need more support or more guidelines
