Parts of Mthatha’s 540-bed Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital — including its operating theatres — were still without running water on Wednesday.
The hospital’s difficulties were due partly to Mthatha’s general water supply problems, and partly to a succession of pipe bursts, Oliver Tambo District Municipality community services director Chauke Ngoma said.
One pipe serving the hospital’s area of town burst on Tuesday morning, he said. No sooner was that fixed than there were two other bursts.
”All that is fixed because our guys worked till the early hours of the morning,” he said. ”Our system is back on track. The only problem we have is the water source is badly reduced because of the drought, so the flow is very slow.”
Because the water was coming through so slowly, the municipality had deployed five tankers to fill the hospital’s own reservoir.
East Cape health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said that by Wednesday afternoon the first and second floors of the complex had water, but the upper floors — there are six in all — did not.
The hospital had brought in portable chemical toilets for staff, visitors and out patients, partly because nurses were having to go home every time they wanted to use the toilet.
The operating theatres were still without water, and staff there were having to scrub up from buckets.
Kupelo said the hospital had been short of water since Friday, and that it was only after a visit by health MEC Monwabisi Goqwana that the tankers began supplying water. – Sapa