The 5th Green Hospitals Asian Conference (GHAC) was held last October 8-10, 2019 in partnership with Khoo Teck Puat Hospital Singapore and Yishun Health. It is a three-day conference themed “Towards a Sustainable, Climate-resilient Asian Healthcare”. The conference has two distinct parts, a pre-conference and main conference.
The pre-conference presented deep-dive sessions on Procurement, Plastics in Healthcare, and Air Pollution. The main conference had five plenary and parallel sessions on Food, Waste, Energy and Building, Communications and Leadership. Moreover, an educational tour for onsite, practical learning was conducted at the end of last day. The educational sites include the Marina Barrage, Tzu Chi Eco-Awareness Center and Siloso Beach Resort.
A few months after the conference, the unprecedented spread of COVID-19 shocked the world and burdened the healthcare sector. The pandemic, however, gave new perspectives in handling healthcare sustainability and resilience. Many hospitals have been made aware of the negative impacts of healthcare operations in the environment including their hospital wastes and chemical usage.
Moreover, at the end of 2020 and start of 2021, many SE Asian countries experienced climate-induced disasters such as typhoons and flooding causing damages to health care facilities.
With all that happened, the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals would like to get in touch again and catch up with the 5th GHAC participants through a virtual reunion. The gathering will:
- Make time for participants to relive their conference experiences, share the lessons they learned and how they were able to apply those learnings especially with the pandemic and the climate-induced disasters;
- Collect insights on what the participants would like to gain from the next GHAC; and
- Explore more ways to make the next conference more inspiring and enjoyable.