Chennai's Water Crisis Is So Bad Doctors Are Being Forced To Buy Water For Conducting Surgeries

Chennai has become the first major Indian city to face an acute water shortage, and the situation is only worsening with each passing day.

Every day, thousands of Chennai residents line up daily to fill cans of water from water tankers across the city. And these queues continues to grow by the day with the city’s water resource drying up at an alarming pace.

Reuters

One of the worst things about the water crisis in the city is that essential services are struggling to cope. Places like hospitals, IT industries and schools are trying desperately to stay afloat, and relying on other means to carry on their day-to-day work.

As the city reels under the water crisis, the prices and demand for water provided by private tankers are soaring by the day. For surgeons in the city the rising prices come second because for them it's all about saving lives.

According to Live Mint, Dr Ravisankar, chairman of Sudar hospitals in Tambaram said that he’s left the situation to the "mercy of Gods." For words like that to come from a doctor means it's an alarming situation, indeed. This one statement proves just how bad things are in water-starved coastal city.

“The cost escalation will have to be passed on to patients, who will have to spend more. If the situation continues, after a month we won't be able to serve patients,” doctor Ravishankar warns.

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For now, the city’s big private hospitals say that they have been able to deal with the skyrocketing price of water from tankers but they can’t sustain this for too long. The only option is to hike the prices of hospital services and that can spell doom for many patients in the city.

The water crisis in Chennai has had a chain reaction like no one ever imagined and things are just going from bad to worse each passing minute.

According to TOI, on an average, a hospital with 30 beds is spending anywhere between Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000 more a day as the supply of piped water dwindles.

“That would mean up to Rs 4.5 lakh a month. It is impossible ?to absorb that loss every month. We will have to pass it on to our patients,” Dr Ravisankar told TOI.

At VHS Hospital in Taramani and Mohamed Rela Institute of Medical Sciences in Chromepet borewells are almost dry.

Doctors

Hospitals use gallons of water to keep everything from operation theatres to corridors and equipment, even doctors' hands sterile 24X7.

With the water crisis, this has seems like an impossible idea. From warning signs to keep taps closed tight to fixing old pipes and leaks in buildings and sewage systems, hospitals across the city are taking drastic steps to ensure conservation of water in the middle of this crisis.

For treatment such as dialysis, hospitals use around 200 litres of RO water for every patient. Senior nephrologist Dr M Ram Prabahar told TOI that at present nearly 50% of Chennai’s water is not fit for medical use.

Rainfall in southern India this week was 30% below normal levels, according to the India Meteorological Department.

Before & After Satellite Photos of Chennai's Dry Lakes

"Right now, there's an emergency so the government is bringing water by trains," Ravisankar said referring to supplies that are typically reserved for drinking water instead of hospitals. "But beyond this? It's all left to nature."

Almost all of Chennai's hospitals are now completely dependent on the more than 5,000 privately-owned tankers that ferry water around the city every day, according to N. Nijalingam, president of the Tamil Nadu Private Water Tanker Lorry Owners' Association.