With some 300 outpatients, 30 in-patients and 140 relatives and medical personnel in need of a total of at least 25 cubic metres of water per day, Khon Kaen’s Phra Yeun Hospital resorted to buying water and calling on local authorities and an Army camp to also supply it water.

Chiang Mai‘s San Pa Tong Hospital mobilises 200,000 litres a day to cater to its needs and is looking for a contractor to set up a waterworks system after securing a Bt7 million fund from the Provincial Waterworks Authority (PWA).

Phra Yeun Hospital director Dr Niran Maneekan said the 30-bed facility was impacted annually by drought but this drought was the most severe. In response to rising demand for water, which could exceed 25 cubic metres a day, Niran said the hospital dug a new well last year as a long-term solution.

It replaced an old well that yielded salty water, resulting in the hospital depending on the municipality’s waterworks system since 2005.

“The problem is supply to the waterworks system becomes insufficient during the drought season, so we sometimes depend on water trucks,” he said. The new and shallower well, located near to the old one, contains contaminants and although it is filtered, it can not be used to clean medical instruments – only for general washing and for use in toilets. But the hospital hired a private company to develop better quality filters, which will be put into use in two weeks. The filters cost between Bt200,000 and Bt300,000. “We still need to rely on the municipalities’ water supply via two trucks per week,” Narin said. “We will filter the water for cleaning medical instruments, consumption, cooking and cleaning patients.” He added that the drinking water was bought from a local company for up to Bt6,000 per month.

It is not just the hospitals that are being impacted by the drought – the suppliers are too. Tambon Phra Yeun Municipality executive Sathit To-on said the municipality stopped its waterworks system in June last year due to a lack of raw water (which generally came from rainwater).

Sathit said the municipality needed to import water from elsewhere for residential use at around 100 cubic metres a day while wells helped enhance supply.

The municipality took turns with other local bodies to provide water to state offices and the Phra Yeun Hospital on a weekly basis, the executive said.

Sathit said the municipality had just received a budget from the PWA to construct a facility to provide raw water from the Chi River, with the project slated for completion by the year’s end.

In the North, San Pa Tong Hospital has suffered for two years after their groundwater well went dry, resulting in 200,000 litres of water per day having to be mobilised and the occasional suspension of surgeries due to a lack of clean instruments, said its director Wirat Bua-ngam. The facility received Bt7 million from the PWA to set up a pipe system to receive tap water and was in the process of finding a contractor to install it within four months, he said.

He said the hospital mostly needed water for cleaning surgery instruments, cleaning patient gowns and other clothes, and for use in toilets.

Last year the hospital had no water for more than three months totally.