Patients and caregivers at Yusuf Maitama Sule University Teaching Hospital have sent a Save Our Soul (SOS) message to the government over severe water shortage at the hospital.
The hospital was initially named Nassarawa Hospital, later renamed after a former Military Administrator of the state, the late Col. Muhammad Abdullahi Wase and in November last year, the state government converted it to the Yusuf Maitama Sule University Teaching Hospital.
The hospital, which caters for the well-being of thousands of patients every day, does not have its own source of water but relies on supply through water tankers from the state government, corporate and individual donors.
The water crisis, according to patients and hospital workers, has continued to affect operations in the hospital.
Kano Chronicle gathered that while a tanker supplies water to the hospital’s reservoir every morning, the supply has remained inadequate, with plantations, flowers and vegetation in the hospital drying up for lack of water.
Abdulmalik Hamza, a businessman who took his pregnant wife to the hospital for delivery, said they spent four days at the hospital due to childbirth complications.
“I had to bring in water that was used in bathing the child and for other uses. This is extended to other patients in the same maternity ward with my wife. Most of the time, they share the water I brought”, he added.
Also speaking, an aged Maimuna Idris lamented that she went to the kitchen to get hot water for her sick daughter and the kitchen staff told her there was no water in any of the containers in the kitchen.
At the mosque area, it was gathered that caregivers and staff of the hospital have to depend on individuals who buy and share sachet water to be used for ablution and in some cases buy from water vendors.
A visitor, Hassan Suleiman said, “In most cases, before ablution, you need to ease yourself, so, there is a need to go to the toilet. Just look into these toilets here, they are in a bad condition and not hygienic. One cannot use them.”
Findings around the hospital area revealed that the hospital was not alone in the water problem as it was discovered that many residential buildings, hotels and other businesses in the area were also buying water from vendors.
Hospital mgt owing us – Water Board
Reacting to questions on why there is insufficient water supply to the hospital, the Managing Director of the state’s Water Board, Garba Ahmad Kofar-Wambai said the hospital management had a bill to settle.
“They are owing us. We have tried enough. We cannot keep supplying them without payment just because we all work for the government.
“The way they charge patients before attending to them is the same way we also operate here. We charge for our services because we have a lot to take care of”, he said.
We need 100,000 litres of water per day – CMD
Reacting, the Chief Medical Director, Dr Mustapha Shuaibu Hikima said the hospital is not suffering from water shortage but attested to the fact that the major source of water supply is from outside the hospital.
“We have two to three sources of water; one is Water Resources Engineering and Construction Agency (WRECA), purchased from outside and from boreholes. Many attempts have been made to construct boreholes within this area but they failed because the area is rocky. You dig down 200 metres and you still do not get water”, he said.
He said the hospital constructed three boreholes recently but only two are yielding water at a negligible percentage to the hospital demands, adding that the hospital buys up to 10 tanks of water every day.
“The water tankers that you see daily supplying us with water actually provide a large portion of what we require. And because of the size of the hospital, having about 250 beds and attending to close to a thousand patients every day, we have to buy from outside to complement what we get from WRECA and the two boreholes,” he said.
He said that governments had tried to construct boreholes but the effort did not yield the desired results and the government is still doing the needful to address the issue.
According to him, there is a need to have a steady supply of 100,000 litres of water every day to get out of the problem.
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