Botha Bothe Hospital out of Food, Water

Ntsoaki Motaung

Patients at the Botha-Bothe hospital have to be brought food by their relatives or starve to death as the hospital has no food to feed them with, Newsday has learnt.

The government hospital faces both a water and food crises after the health facility fell out with their supplier/caterer over unpaid fees. While the water crisis is one which they have been battling for a while, the food issue is quite recent.

Although no significant measures have been taken to redress the situation, this paper has learned that government through the ministry of Health, is quite aware of the pandemonium.

According to Manager of the hospital Selialia Selialia, things have gotten to a point whereby only outpatients are treated by the hospital.

“We come a long way with the water problem, it has been years now and the Ministry of health is aware of the situation. We lack water because the pressure of water is very low and the pipes cannot distribute water to the whole buildings of the hospital. Also the ministry was informed ages ago about the problem but we have been told that the ministry will help in that situation because the hospital budget is very limited and cannot afford to do that all by its self,” he said

“It is also true that the Hospital does not have food for the patients. We were told when trying to find out why there is no food that the person who is responsible for supplying the hospital with food has decided to halt their services because they are owed a huge sums of money. We experienced the problem from early this week,” he said.

“We are only offering services to patients that are stable, that do not need to be hospitalized. As for those that are Critical, are informed of the circumstances at the hospital so that they decide if they stay or choose to be transferred to other hospitals. If they choose to stay it means they will have to have means of getting water and food usually it is through the help of their relatives or persons responsible for them. Officials from the ministry came to the hospital to learn the situation,” he said. Efforts to get comment from the Ministry drew a blank as both the Director Clinical Services of the Ministry of Health Dr Lucy Mapota as well as the Principal Secretary of the Ministry Khothatso TÅ¡ooana’s phones rang unanswered until the time of going to press.