Patients and their relatives drink water from a handpump outside ANMCH in Gaya on Friday. Picture by Suman

Patients at Anugrah Narayan Medical College and Hospital (ANMCH) are facing severe water crisis. The situation aggravated over the past 10 days after the temperature soared in the district.

Sarju Manjhi, the relative of a patient admitted in the surgery ward, said: “We have to go outside the hospital campus to fetch drinking water. Even patients have to go outside the hospital to relieve themselves.”

Only one motor pump supplies water to the entire campus as the two others have become defunct. Besides the hospital, the three pumps supplied water to the medical college, five boys’ hostels, two girls’ hostels, two nurses’ hostels, a nurse training school and the quarters of doctors, Grade III and Grade IV employees. Now, the burden of supplying water to all these buildings have fallen upon the sole water pump. While one motor was burnt around a year ago, another met the same fate around 15 days ago.

ANMCH superintendent Sitaram Prasad confirmed that only one of the three motor pumps is functioning.

The hospital has 540 beds with 15 departments. Of these, admission of patients is made in seven departments, including medicine, surgery, gynaecology, paediatrics, orthopaedic, eye, ENT and skin. Around 400 patients are admitted in these departments, while around 300 medicos and 60 nurses stay in hostels. The strength of nurses’ training school on the campus is 150.

Erstwhile superinten-dents Shreekant Prasad Singh and Ashok Kumar had got three motors of 1HP each installed in the medicine, emergency and gynaecology departments in November 2002 and July 2003 before they retired. Of these, only the medicine department pump is functional.

Sitaram Prasad said: “The emergency department pump has been repaired and will be installed in a couple of days.”

Apart from the motor pumps, three hand pumps on the hospital campus are also non-functional for over a month. Letters have been written to the public health and engineering department (PHED) for repair of the hand pumps but to no avail. The superintendent said letters have been written to PHED in August, September and December last year for construction of an overhead tank so that water could be stored to be supplied in different departments of the hospital.

“But, we have not received any response. Only after the PHED prepares a proposal, can it be sent to the state government for sanction of funds,” he said, adding the department has set May 30 as the deadline.