Hospitals struggle to cope with flood effects
Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA Wire
GP prescriptions from flooded Tewkesbury are arriving at hospitals |
Hospitals in parts of England that remain under water after torrential rain last week are cutting back on services as they find it hard to cope with the knock-on effects of flooding.
Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and Cheltenham General Hospital have both
had their mains water cut off and expect to be without water for 10 to
14 days. As a result, all non-urgent outpatient activity and non-urgent
elective surgery and day cases have been cancelled.
Peter Shaw, pharmacy director for Gloucester Hospitals NHS Foundation
Trust, said that the lack of water was the main problem for the hospitals.
Limited water was available from reserve tanks for handwashing and flushing
toilets, but there was no mains drinking water. The reserve was being
kept topped-up with water delivered by tanker by Severn Trent Water.
Specific problems dealt with by pharmacy staff included the loss of power
at Rikenel Health Centre in Gloucester, where the trust kept its vaccine
supplies. All the vaccine stock had to be transferred to refrigerators
at the hospital. Also, GP prescriptions were arriving at the hospital’s
outpatient pharmacy because community pharmacies in Tewkesbury were closed
because of the floods there.
“Some staff are still having trouble getting in. It’s a good
learning exercise for everybody,” Dr Shaw concluded. “If
the electricity had gone off, that would have been a major problem.”
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader