Getting water where we need it the most.

My counterpart and I are in the process of planning a project to bring reliable running water to our hospital. It is sad but true that our hospital does not always have running water. This is a huge problem and one that I along with my counterpart hope to fix in my remaining 5 months. 

Our hospital is in the center of my town. It is a large building with a basement, ground floor, and second floor. However the only part of the hospital that is operational is the ground floor. The basement and the second floor, like most of the infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan, is sitting in a dilapidated unusable condition. My village is the central village in our village region. Our total region has about 8,000 people in it. This hospital is the main health care provider for these people. Our hospital consists of a maternity ward, a general medical unit, and a dentist. About 100 people come through the hospital everyday. Many people spend multiple nights if they are very sick or have had a baby. All of this is happening at a hospital that only has 2 working sinks that only work from 9 am until 1 pm, and sometimes there is no water at all. The rest of the water comes from a pipe in the back yard of the hospital. However in winter the pipe does not thaw till about 11pm and then there is only water there for about 2 hours. The work of fetching the water lies on the woman in charge of sanitation. She is older, not very quick moving, and spends a lot of her time lugging buckets of water in and out of the hospital. With my remaining time in Kyrgyzstan and I am devoted it to fixing this. 

Our outback water source

Hauling the water

I am in a position to help improve the sanitation and hygiene of the hospital, to reduce the amount of manual labor the hospital workers are doing and allow them to devote more time to their patients at the hospital. These are things I find to be very important for my counterpart, my village, and the health of my community. This is why I am going to be devoting most of my time towards this. It is an ambitious project. The hospital has 7 sinks that do not work, 2 that work and only for a limited period of time each day, 4 toilet hook ups that may work if we had water, and some of the other rooms have portable sinks. My counterpart uses a recycled beer bottle to dump water over her hands when she washes them, and she’s the gynecologist at the hospital. We are in the process of tracking down a professional plumber to help us create a concrete plan. We have some ideas but they need work. One of our ideas is to use the second floor to store several large tanks that we will pump water from the village source into during the 9 am to 1 pm time frame. These tanks will be large enough to supply the hospital for several days in the event that the village does not have water. We will have a second pump that will deliver the stored water to the hospital. We need to replace all of the existing piping since most of it is rusted, cracked, or non-existent. We need to verify that the existing village drainage system works. Our work is cut out for us, but if this project is successful our hospital will have: 11 working sinks with 8 of them having running hot and cold water, 4 working indoor toilets, a working shower, and the remaining rooms would have new portable sinks. The sanitation and hygiene of the hospital would be greatly improved, the amount of manual labor the workers are doing would be reduced, and the hospital would have one of the most basic, but necessary items for a hospital, running water. 

Our outhouses

Water damage from broken pipes

Rusted leaking pipes

We will have a more solid plan with all of the specifics within 2 months. Our preliminary budget is about $5,000. We have to figure out all of the logistics and the funding still, but we are optimistic. We are investigating using online fundraising like indiegogo, we are looking into several charities in the U.S. that are devoted to water based projects, and we have several large companies in Kyrgyzstan that have a history of donating money to similar projects. Hopefully by March we will be able to secure funding and begin this project. I’ll keep you all posted! 

Our Hospital scheme with potential water plans.