Mbale Regional Referral Hospital has been hit by lack of water for the past one week exposing the lives of patients and medical workers to risk.
The sanitary and hygienic conditions of all wards plus other hospital facilities is appalling causing anxiety among the medical staff.
The maternity, causality ward among other departments are struggling to operate due to the water scarcity. The patients caretakers and hospital staff have to walk to the mosque of Masjid Noor in Mbale city to fetch water.
The hospital has two tanks for rainwater harvesting, however, due to the high number of patients, the tanks have run dry.
Juma Mafabi from Busia who has spent over two weeks in the hospital says that he is forced to move about three kilometres in search for water. Mafabi is also worried that patients and their attendants are at risk of contracting diseases.
Grace Nafunna whom we found attending to her son with a broken leg said that the situation is appalling. She said that she is forced to move between town and hospital in search for water leaving her son unattended to.
Florence Nadeka who had spent over two weeks in the hospital while attending to her sick child appealed to the hospital management and town council authorities to rectify the situation immediately.
Dr Emmanuel Tugainawo, the Mbale Hospital Director said the absence of water is a general problem in the entire town. According to him, the hospital population is too big for them to maintain water in all units of the hospital.
He said that during the crisis of water, they hire fire brigade to supply water and fill water in a few tanks around the hospital especially in critical departments.
Agnes Aketch, the manager National Water and Sewerage Cooperation Mbale branch said that the problem could be with the hospital because the entire town is not facing water shortage.
“That could be an internal problem because we have water in the whole town and we have also not received any formal complaint from the hospital concerning that matter,” Aketch said on phone.
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