AN ACUTE water shortage has forced the Komfo Anokye Teaching (KATH), in Kumasi, the second largest medical facility in the country, to suspend surgical operations.
A major damage to Ghana Water Company Limited’s main pipeline, which is serving the 70-year-old hospital, was said to have curtailed water supply to KATH for the last 10 days.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of KATH, Kwame Frimpong, confirming the report, said “KATH operations are water-dependent for infection prevention and control purposes.”
He revealed that KATH’s huge water reservoir got exhausted few days after water supply from the Ghana Water Company Limited stopped, so the hospital had to look for different sources.
In order to sustain their important services, he said the hospital’s management swiftly switched to private water tankers for supply, but things didn’t work out as planned.
The hospital then contacted the Ghana National Fire Service and the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, but the supply from the two bodies also got exhausted within few days.
“Our partners helped us, but the scale of our operations and the number of people who reside in this enclave is so huge that the support we were getting proved to be inadequate.
“For a hospital like this to be denied water service for 10 days is quite unthinkable, but it’s something beyond us,” Mr. Frimpong lamented to journalists on Thursday.
He said the water crisis at the medical facility, has regrettably forced the hospital to “suspend some of the surgical operations so they could concentrate on emergency ones.”
The KATH PRO, however, said the hospital was still in talks with the Ghana Water Company Limited “to get us some alternative source of water.”
He also said the Minister of Health and the Ashanti Regional Minister are also working tirelessly to get more water tankers to supply water to KATH.
On what should be done to stop water crisis at KATH, he suggested, “for a solution, the state should invest in getting KATH a dedicated line from the water production site.”
This, he said, would stop the current situation whereby KATH has to compete with other residential communities in Kumasi for water supply from the Ghana Water Company Limited.
FROM I.F. Joe Awuah, Kumasi