Patients and staff at Jubilee Hospital in northern Gauteng are enduring severe hardship as the facility faces a prolonged water outage with inadequate contingency measures in place for over two weeks.
Toilets are not working, and operations have been cancelled.
Workers are resorting to using red bins, typically designated for medical waste, to transport water from tanks.
Unions say they have been urging hospital management to install a borehole since 2016.
It is unimaginable for a hospital to run out of water as it hurts sick people and heightens the risk of infections.
Last year, the DA proposed that every hospital have a water resilience plan, including boreholes, expanded reserve water storage, rainwater harvesting, and greywater reuse systems.
These measures should be implemented urgently in all hospitals as Gauteng’s water woes worsen.