6:39 p.m. ET, November 25, 2022
Kyiv hospital almost forced to evacuate some patients after loss of water supply
From CNN’s Yulia Kesaieva in Kyiv and Jo Shelley in London
One of Ukraine’s largest state hospitals was on the verge of evacuating some patients Wednesday after it lost water supply due to a
Russian missile barrage, a local official told CNN.
The Kyiv Regional Clinical Hospital was about to move patients undergoing dialysis treatment, which requires an uninterrupted water supply, the deputy head of the region's military administration said in a phone interview.
“Unfortunately, when the power goes off in Kyiv, the central water supply also often fails,” the official, Vitaliy Vlasiuk, explained. “A lack of water supply is critical.”
“Without water, it is difficult to run the hospital. First of all, sterilization rooms suffer and (dialysis) is impossible to conduct," he said. "On Wednesday, the Kyiv Regional Clinical Hospital was on the edge of evacuating patients who require (dialysis) to other facilities, but in the afternoon the water supply was restored and everyone received the procedures vital for them."
Some background: Ukraine was
hit by a barrage of Russian missiles Wednesday afternoon, which damaged critical infrastructure and resulted in a temporary loss of power to the national grid.
Hospitals have generators that kick in when the power is cut, but these have limited capacity, Vlasiuk said. Medical chiefs try to conserve power by using them only for essential activities.
How Ukraine's hospitals survive outages: Power from generators allows surgeons to continue operations during a blackout, but non-urgent surgery does not take place, according to Vlasiuk.
Hospital staff may wear headlamps so that the generator can last longer, he continued.
But he insisted that wards would be “fully lit” – despite photos that have shown doctors in the capital and other regions wearing the lights.
Orest Chemerys, the head of Lviv’s regional health department, said that critical equipment like incubators and the intensive care wards were switched to generator power within seconds of a blackout. Almost all the region’s health care facilities temporarily survived on generators after Wednesday’s airstrikes.
“We are prepared for a situation in which there might be no power for 7 to 10 days,” Chemerys said. Each hospital in the Lviv region has a generator and the authorities have agreements with local gas stations to supply the fuel, he added.
Ukraine’s minister of health, Viktor Liashko, told national TV on Friday that each hospital with an ICU and operating room had a generator and the government was bringing in additional generators to further increase capacity.