Joburg hospitals coping with water outage

Hospitals in Johannesburg are able to avoid the worst of Rand Water’s maintenance outage thanks to in-house reservoirs and boreholes, the Gauteng department of health says. 

The shutdown affects Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Lenasia South Hospital, Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, South Rand Hospital, Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital, and Helen Joseph Hospital, as well as a number of clinics in the city.

“All the hospitals currently have supply of water through tankers, with Rahima Moosa and Helen Joseph having trucks permanently pumping water to the facilities’ reservoir and roof tanks respectively.

“Helen Joseph also has a high-pressure pump to boost the water movement to the upper floors in the facility. The clinics have storage tanks and will be regularly supplied by Joburg Water,” said Gauteng health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba.

Department officials are on standby throughout the shutdown to provide support to affected hospitals and clinics, Modiba added.

Asked how much water is needed for a hospital to run effectively, Modiba said no two hospitals are the same.

“Some hospitals have in-house reservoirs other have tanks only. Some also have boreholes while others don’t. Kalafong Hospital has two water reservoirs which have capacities of 748,000 and 480,000 litres respectively,” he said.

“Pholosong Hospital, has two in-house reservoirs with capacities of 60,000 and 100,000 litres respectively, which are always full via an auto-refill system. Water is then distributed from the reservoirs to different areas within the hospital. Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa Mother and Child have tanks and boreholes on site.”

The reservoirs and tanks are able to insulate the facilities for a short period when there are supply interruptions, though prolonged outages would affect their demand.

“Water tankers are used to refill the reservoirs and the in-house tanks on a continuous basis in situations where you have prolonged supply interruption.”

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