Use of salt water breaks down medical equipment at Tema General Hospital

Medical equipment at the Tema General Hospital have broken down due to the use of saline water from boreholes by the hospital, an official has told TV3.

The Hospital resorted to the use of the salt water from one of the boreholes as a result of incessant shortage of pipe borne water at the facility.

Speaking to TV3’s Josephine Frempong on Monday, January 5, the Medical Director of the Tema General Hospital, Dr Kwabena Opoku Adusei, said the medical facility faces many problems “and water problem is paramount because hospitals virtually run on water.”

“We are trying to make sure that at least we have water,” he stated, adding that efforts to get pipe born water running for daily hospital operations led to the drilling of boreholes by the previous administration in collaboration with the National Security.

“The little that came out of one of the boreholes is still working, but the water was so salty that it grounded the SSD machines and some of the machines cannot work with this salty water,” he pointed out.

The perennial water shortage suffered by the Hospital has led to officers of the Ghana Water Company Limited collaborating with authorities to get the problem solved.

According to Dr Opoku Adusei, the Hospital sometimes goes to the extent of buying water from tankers to rescue the situation.

The Ghana Water Company Limited has, however, blamed the problem on its inability to pump water through the Hospital’s pipelines.

But it assured that the problem will soon be solved.