Rob Ferreira Hospital’s internal operations seem to be falling apart. On February 24, the Mpumalanga Department of Health (DoH) released a statement explaining why the hospital had not had water since Friday, February 21. This comes after some patients raised their concern on social media about the challenges they are facing. One patient can be seen in a video sharing how they struggled to use the bathroom, that they were hungry and they could not drink tea because there was no water.

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In the statement, the DoH’s spokesperson, Dumisani Malamule, said the hospital experienced water shortages over the weekend due to the main pipe bursting on the hospital premises. “The department immediately deployed a technical team to assess and fix the faulty pipe. Unfortunately the work was not completed on time on February 23, because some clamps were not available and could only be procured on Monday.”

Malamule said access to water is critical to any health facility. The provision of healthcare services should take place in a hygienically clean and safe environment.

“During this challenging time, the DoH deployed a water tanker to supply water to Rob Ferreira’s critical wards to ensure the hospital provides critical and emergency services. The department can confirm the supply of water to the hospital has been restored, and full services will immediately resume. The department would like to apologise to the public, staff and stakeholders for the inconvenience caused.”

On February 5, the hospital had gone without electricity for more than 12 hours after the City of Mbombela (CoM) had cut it off.
According to a source who chose to remain anonymous, the staff members were terrified of pricking themselves with contaminated needles and of patients dying of preventable conditions.

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During the power cut, the CoM’s spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, confirmed the electricity was cut off due to their municipal debt.

“We followed all the processes to urge the Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport to pay us. Several letters of demand were sent to them, but were ignored. We told them we were going to cut off their electricity, but still they did not pay. So we had no choice but to cut off the electricity. We have switched on the hospital’s power for now, but if the department doesn’t pay as they promised, we are going to cut the power off again until their debt is fully settled.”

On January 21, one of the pipes in the hospital had caught fire.
According to the DoH, a patient was allegedly smoking and threw away a cigarette butt in the wrong place, which possibly started a small fire. The fire department was called in and the fire was put out before it could cause major damage. No one was injured, however, the smoke moved through several wards including the day and paediatric wards, which were then evacuated.