Reducing the risks from hospital wastewater

Hospital wastewater (HWW) is characterised by the presence of various emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs), several microorganisms, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE), antibiotic-resistant genes (ARG), and persistent viruses, etc. It is important to note that Carbapenem antibiotics are often considered a last-resort treatment, as they represent the final suite of antibiotics available. However, increasing bacterial resistance to them underscores the urgent need for antibiotic stewardship.

Healthcare is a rapidly growing industry, as medical treatments become more sophisticated and more in demand due to the increasing incidence of chronic disease. I will be exploring the following.

I would like to begin with the acknowledgement to Professor Joachim Kohn,¹ who has explored his interest in pathology, and was the 'inventor extraordinary to the Medical Laboratory'; he died in London on 31 March 1987. Born in Poland in 1912, he qualified in medicine there in 1936, served in the Polish forces, and became a prisoner of war in Russia until 1941, being one of the few officers to survive the Katyn massacre. He continued to support the war efforts, and when he moved to the UK, he served bravely in the British 8th Army throughout its campaigns until 1947. In peacetime he became a ship's surgeon for two years before training at St Mary's Hospital Roehampton, where he became a Consultant Clinical Pathologist in 1955, and later a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology at the University of London, officially retiring in 1977.