LACK of potable water at Abutia-Norvisi community in the Ho West District of the Volta Region has become a major hindrance to quality health care delivery at the community health facility called Abutia Clinic, Weekend Today can report.
The worrying development, according to some nurses and midwives at the health facility, who spoke to Weekend Today on condition of anonymity, had compelled them to resort to the use of sachet water to deliver pregnant women who are in labour and other patients.
Weekend Today also gathered that since the establishment of the clinic in 2009, both patients and medical officers have been relying on sachet water anytime they visit the facility.
They (the medical officers) lamented that they sometimes had to postpone an operation due to the lack of water.
Some patients who spoke to Weekend Today in an interview said they are also sometimes forced to buy sachet water to bath and wash their clothes.
Administrator of the clinic, Mr. Bismark Mofakye, who corroborated the ordeal patients were going through at the clinic, noted that the problem had existed for a very long time with successive governments doing nothing about it.
The issue came to light when the Volta Regional Minister, Dr. Archibald Letsa, and a cross-section of journalists visited Abutia-Norsivi to commission a GH¢30,000.00 water facility project built by Man Capital Partners, an investment company for the community.
According to sources at the clinic, they had difficulty complaining to government about the water problem because of lack of cooperation.
Weekend Today also observed that lots of patients sleep on benches and in some cases in wheel chairs with drips on them.
Some of the patients told Weekend Today that they had been in that situation for days.
According to some residents of the community, they walk several kilometres to fetch water from streams because one of the two boreholes provided by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) had broken down.
According to them, the situation was also affecting education in the area.
They lamented that over 5,000 people living in the area depend on one borehole.
For his part, Dr. Letsa expressed worry about the situation and called for the empowerment of rural women.
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