‘Imagine the smell’: Water crisis in Gauteng hospitals

The Department of Health has been accused of passing the bucket as complaints pour in about the horrendous state of the Helen Joseph and other state hospitals following a weekend without water, which led to patients relieving themselves in plastic bags.

Spokeswoman Kwara Kekana said the Gauteng department of health remains concerned about the ongoing water disruptions, which negatively impacted service provision at their facilities.

She said the power failure as reported by Rand Water over the weekend affected the City of Joburg, Rand West local municipality, Merafong City local municipality and Mogale City local municipality, and resulted in reservoirs running low.

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This affected the water supply to parts of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital and Leratong Hospital in the West Rand.

Kekana said the ongoing water disruptions in the Brixton, Crosby and Hursthill areas continued to affect water supply to the Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa Mother and Child hospitals.

Kekana said as an interim measure, provision is always made to supply affected facilities with water tankers.

“Given that health facilities require tons of water to perform various services and the need for sustained supply of water, the stop-gap measure only allows for limited service provision,” Kekana said.

Since last week, she said, the management of Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa tried to alleviate some of the pressure by transferring some patients to other hospitals and also performing some of their theatre operations at other facilities.

“I am in a bad place where we are sick and there is no water,” a patient at the Helen Joseph hospital told The Citizen.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the patient said: “There is still no water after the weekend. Can you imagine the smell in the walkways and the infections that are going to happen here? What is this freedom we celebrated really?”

The patient said it was challenging, especially for patients wearing nappies.

A doctor who worked at the Leratong hospital over the weekend said she had to watch a patient die because she couldn’t treat him as they were unable to sterilise the stitching kits and chest drains.

“Meaning patients in casualties couldn’t receive emergency treatment,” she said.

A nurse, who also agreed to comment anonymously, described the state of the casualty ward on Monday morning “as if they slaughtered a cow in there” because they couldn’t clean the ward due to the lack of water.

marizkac@citizen.co.za