By our correspondent
Kaduna state owned General Hospital located in Sabon Tasha, South of Kaduna town has been reportedly operating without electricity and water supply for over two months, investigation has revealed
Hospital patients and families rely on car wash outside the hospital premises for their water needs, and rechargeable lamps bought by the managements to light the wards at night time.
Hospitals sources, who spoke to our reporter in confidence confirmed the situation, saying the hospital transformer blew up over two months ago, and still undergoing repairs.
The sources also told our correspondent that no alternative source of power supply has been provided to power and pump water into the hospital from its borehole.
The ugly trend was uncovered when our reporter visited the government secondary facility located in a densely populated area of Sabon Tasha, Kaduna suburb of Chikun LGA.
While it was reported that patients are groaning in pains and complaints, a staff nurse also told our reporter in confidence that patients are also providing alternative source of light from phones and touchlight to be able to illumination their various wards at night.
According to a Nurse who also obliged information in confidence, patients and families have to rely on water source from a car wash outside the premises on daily basis for all their water needs especially for toilets and bathing.
For instance, a female patient (name withheld) was met panting with difficulty breathing when returning back to her ward after using convenience far from her ward.
“Help us advocate, we’ve no light and water for months now. We’ve borehole but no light to power it. This is how we’ve been suffering, operating for months now”, a nurse appealed to our reporter.
Asked when the transformer will be brought back, she said “We’ve not had of anytime the transformer will be fixed and return to the hospital yet. The Doctor only comes around in the daytime.
Earlier, there was a social media posting by a journalist, saying “Just stepping out of General hospital Sabon Tasha, Kaduna state, after visiting a patient in female ward. No light, no water. Patients complaints bitterly, nurse confirmed it..”it has been like that for month’s now since their transformer blew up”.
All the patients’ ward visited were without light and water except phone and rechargeable lamps bought in by the hospital management for use as temporary measure.
A senior staff nurse who pleaded anonymity however said the Commissioner of health is proactive and had tried so hard in providing rechargeable lamps to all the patients wards and also taking the transformer for repair but his efforts have not yielded the desired result.
All efforts to reach the commissioner of health Kaduna state and the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, failed to yield result.
However, when contacted for assistance with the contacts numbers of the above mentioned officials, the Executive Secretary, State Primary healthcare Board (SPH), Dr. Bello Jamoh. who promised verifying from the hospital immediately could not get back to our reporter as at the time of filling this report.
Sabon Tasha General hospital has a long history of poor or lack of electricity and water supply since the previous administration.
It’ll be recalled that Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna state had decried shortage of funds to even pay salaries due paucity of funds
