KARACHI, Sept 3: Contaminated water is being supplied to all major hospitals of the city increasing the possibilities of outbreaks of viral infections among the patients and hospital staff.

A survey revealed that there was no water treatment plant in any of the government hospitals and the underground and on surface water reservoirs of all these hospitals had not been cleaned for years.

The recent monsoon showers have further aggravated the situation as sewage-mixed rainwater that remained accumulated at these hospitals for many days, got mixed up with the underground water reservoirs, apparently resulting in further contamination of the water, which is to be supplied to the hospitals.

A doctor at the Civil Hospital Karachi said that the underground and overhead water tanks of the hospital had not been cleaned for over a decade.

He revealed that the hospital's underground tank was cleaned 10 years ago when a dog had fallen into it.

The doctor said that although some small filter units had been installed in the water coolers but those were not sufficient enough.

The situation in the other major hospital of the city, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) is not different from the Civil Hospital, where the water reservoirs had not been cleaned for many years and contaminated rainwater had mixed up with the underground reservoirs.

A doctor told Online that he had been working with the hospital for the last eight years and during the entire period the administration did not conducted a single cleaning operation of the facility’s water reservoirs.

There were no filter units in the hospital and the doctors, paramedical staff and patients either have to bring boiled water from their home or to buy mineral water from medical stores, he said.

He said that the poor patients, who could not afford to purchase mineral water, were compelled to use the unfit and polluted water being supplied from the tanks.

He deplored that the supply of unfit water was not the only problem at the JPMC, but even substandard food was being provided at the hospitals' canteen.—Online