The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), the major referral centre for medical treatment in the country, has been hard-hit by the recent water shortages plaguing Accra and its environs.
Various departments in the hospital have been badly affected by the situation, including the cardiothoracic centre, maternity, surgical and accidents centres have had to reduce their operations when the water in their reservoirs got used up.
Lately, Accra has been experiencing water shortage with people travelling long distance for water, some of them in trucks.
The water shortage is hampering essential services, with hospitals and fire service being the hardest hits.
The Ghana Fire Service has also served notice that it may not be able to attend emergency fire situations because of absence of water.
The water shortage has forced Korle Bu to rely solely on water tankers to provide its daily water supply.
A cardiothoracic surgeon (name withheld) at the cardio centre told DAILY GUIDE that the shortage of water supply to the centre was affecting its operations.
He said the centre would, therefore, not be able to conduct any surgery till there was a supply of water.
�This place is like a hotel that houses large number of people so you can just imagine the amount of water we need every day to run this place,� he said
Some patients who visited the hospital for dialysis have also had to return to their homes because there was no water to operate the machines.
The Public Relations Officer of KBTH, Mustapha Salifu, admitted that �water is an essential part of the operations of the hospitals. Our operations run on water so without water we cannot deliver health care,� he said.
However, he observed that �the current situation has become a frequent occurrence that the hospital has to come to live with because of its high demand for water.�
�Because of the situation we find ourselves in, we have made arrangement with private water suppliers so that when we need external water supply, they could come and give us,� he told DAILY GUIDE.
Mr Salifu, however, refuted claims that the hospital had asked some patients to go home because there was no water for treatment.
He said the hospital would need �1 million to buy a treatment plant that would treat the water in the bore holes to make it safe for the hospital to use in its operations.
Mr Salifu also noted that the hospital was expanding its reservoirs to store more water in the coming days.
The western part of Accra, where KBTH is situated, has been hit with water shortage over the week as a result of burst pipe at the Weija Treatment Plant that supplies water to the area in addition to the Ghana Water Company Limited planned shutdown of the Kpong Treatment Plant for maintenance works.
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