Medical waste strewn along major St. John's road

Medical waste - including bloody medical rags and used surgical gloves - were found littering the side of the road along the Prince Philip Drive in St. John's Monday.

Vials of blood and urine, some were labelled with patients' names, were also among the debris.

The waste was near the Petten Building, not far from Confederation Building.

CBC News contacted Eastern Health shortly after the discovery and a team was sent to remove it.

Late Monday, the health authority confirmed the medical waste did come from the Health Sciences Centre. The province's largest hospital is also a short drive from where the waste was found.

On Tuesday, Pat Coish-Snow, a vice-president at Eastern Health, told CBC News proper procedures were not followed.

"Staff had obviously discarded the waste into a standard waste disposal unit instead of using a biomedical waste disposal unit," said Coish-Snow.

"We certainly regret that this has happened and certainly we need to continue to follow-up with staff to talk with them about appropriate processes and procedures."

On Tuesday afternoon Eastern Health confirmed the medical waste  originated from its Health Sciences Centre Emergency Department. 

In a statement emailed to CBC News it said:

• Inspection of the spilled material revealed that all four bags were intended for landfill and contained materials appropriate for landfill, with the exception of blood samples and urine samples.  This means that these samples were inappropriately disposed of in regular garbage, and that the proper procedures for the disposal of biomedical waste were not followed.

• The biomedical waste mixed with regular garbage consisted of three urine samples, and eight vials of blood with eight patient names identified on the samples.  As such, this incident resulted in a privacy breach. 
• Eastern Health has been in communication with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and will be contacting these eight patients to notify them of the privacy breach.
• Eastern Health sincerely regrets that this incident has happened, and continues to investigate.