THE ROYAL Bournemouth and Poole Hospital have moved quickly to reassure patients that clinical waste from their facilities is treated promptly by incineration - unlike the hospitals at the centre of the NHS body parts scandal.

"There is no stockpile of waste awaiting treatment," said a spokesman. “Clinical waste from The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals is treated by incineration on the Royal Bournemouth Hospital site. This is carried out by a contractor within their own facility."

A spokesman for Poole said: “All clinical and infected waste from Poole Hospital is disposed of in a timely way by an approved contractor to a licensed offsite facility. The contractor sends the waste, depending on classification type, to either an incinerator, which incorporates a waste heat recovery unit, or a decontamination and disposal unit, which feeds a ‘waste to energy’ plant.”

Earlier last week it was revealed that hundreds of tonnes of waste material, from used bandages to body parts, had to be frozen in a storage facility, whilst awaiting incineration in five hospitals in the north and east of the UK. The issues had been discussed by the government's emergency

COBRA committee, which normally meets in response to national disaster or terror attacks.