HOMS joins the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals Network
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- On World Environment Day, the Hospital Metropolitano de Santiago (HOMS) joined the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals Network to reduce its footprint in waste, energy and water.
Santiago – As World Environment Day is marked today, the Hospital Metropolitano de Santiago (HOMS) has joined as an active member of the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals Network in order to reduce its climate footprint and promote public environmental health across three core objectives: waste, energy and water. This responsibility began in 2014 and was confirmed in 2019 by incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) linked to Health and Wellbeing into its corporate and operational strategy.
HOMS thus confirms its commitment to the planet and to people by promoting public health, progressively reducing its environmental impact in order to cut hospital climate pollution, because it recognises the relationship that exists between people’s wellbeing and the environment, which is why it involves the participation of the community, patients and their families, for health equity and a green economy.
In the same way, HOMS places the Dominican Republic in a privileged position among more than 2,000 members in over 80 countries that are driving innovation to transform the health sector and promote a healthy future for people and the planet within this Green and Healthy Hospitals Network.
Among the environmental commitments HOMS has signed up to is reducing the volume and toxicity of the hospital waste it produces, while at the same time implementing the most environmentally sensible options for managing and disposing of that waste.
Equally, reducing the use of energy from fossil fuels as a way of improving and protecting the population’s health, and promoting energy efficiency, for the use of alternative renewable energy with the aim of covering energy needs through renewable sources located on site or in the community.
The third objective is the efficient use of water: aiming to adopt conservation, recycling and treatment measures that reduce water consumption and wastewater pollution. Also, to establish the relationship between the availability of drinking water and the resilience of services to withstand physical, natural, economic and social disruption, in order to promote public environmental health by supplying drinking water to the community and thus reducing pollution of the water table.
“HOMS is an institution of science and humanism and therefore believes in and promotes climate justice, joining worthwhile, tangible initiatives for social transformation. Actions to mitigate and reduce the carbon footprint are no exception. That is why we invite all the country’s health centres to join in local actions that are community-based and global in impact. We aim to be part of the solutions and commitments the country has taken on within its climate ambition to be a carbon-neutral country by 2050, especially in the Dominican Republic, a country highly vulnerable to disaster risk, made worse by climate change”, the institution stated in an official communication.
About HOMS
HOMS is a pioneer in the Dominican Republic in minimally invasive robotic surgery and holds international Accreditation Canada (ACI) certification as a guarantee of people-centred safety and quality of care, positioning itself as one of the leaders in health tourism in the country and the region.