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 and even more, investigation has revealed
Hospital patients and families relied on car wash outside the hospital premises for their water needs, and rechargeable lamps bought by the managements to light the wards in the night time.
Hospitals sources, Doctors, Nurses and staffs, who spoke to our reporter in confidence confirmed the allegations, saying the hospital transformer blew up over two months ago, and still undergoing repair where it was taken to.
The sources also told our correspondent that no alternative source of power supply has been provided to electrify and pump water into the hospital from it borehole.
The ugly trend was uncovered when our reporter visited the government secondary facility located in a densely populated area of Sabon Tasha, Kaduna suburd town, Chikun LGA.
While he reported that patients are groaning in pains and complaints, a staffs nurse also told our reporter in confidence that patients also providing alternative source of light from phones and touchlight to be able to illumination their various wards in the night.
According to a Nurse who also obliged information in confidence, patients and families have to relied on water source from car wash outside the premises on daily basis for all their water needs especially toilets and bathing, to complement cleaners.
Patients also had to contend with battling with mosquitoes evening and night times even with safety nets, and most times receiving treatment in darkness with its attendant consequences.
For instance, a female patient (name withheld) was met panting with difficulty breathing when returning back to her ward from place of convenience outside hospital ward’s places of convenience.
Her bed found with blood stains, while her right hand side swollen up, perhaps due to wrong direction of basic point of putting searing for drips in darkness.
“Help us advocate,s, we’ve no light and water for months now. We’ve borehole but no light to pump 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 come around in the daytime.
Earlier, there was 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”, replies.
All the patients’ ward visited were without light and water except phone and rechargeable lamps bought 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 tried so hard in proving rechargeable lamps to all the patients wards and taken the transformer for repair.
All efforts to reach out to the commissioner of health Kaduna state and the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, failed to yield a positive 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 until the time of filling this reports.
Sabon Tasha General hospital has a long history of poor or lack of electricity and water supplies from the previous administration.
It’ll be recalled that Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna state had decried shortage of funds to even pay salaries due to N423 billion fraud allegation raised by state house of Assembly Ad-hoc committee probe reports
