More than one-third of hospitals in the developing world lack running water, creating dangerous and unsanitary conditions for patients, a study from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore revealed.
Researchers analyzed 430 hospitals in 19 previously published surgical capacity studies from 2009 to 2015 and found 147 hospitals did not have running water. The percent of hospitals without running water varied between the 19 nations included in the study, from fewer than 20 percent in Liberia to over 90 percent in Bangladesh and Ghana.
An estimated 700 million people worldwide do not have access to water, half of which live in sub-Saharan Africa. In hospitals, this negatively impacts treatments and surgeries.
"Instead of water just being there, some hospitals truck in water or collect it in rain barrels, with no guarantee of its cleanliness. Without clean water, there is no way to clean surgeons' hands or instruments, wash gowns and sheets or clean wounds to prevent or reduce infections," one of the study's leaders, Adam Kushner, MD, MPH, said in a release.
Researchers said the data highlights larger deficiencies in the world's healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries, as well as a need for basic infrastructure to prevent the spread of disease.
Dr. Kusher said a greater push needs to be implemented to provide global water access. He suggests countries with the largest percent of hospitals without running water could learn from more equipped neighboring countries.
The research was published in the Journal of Surgical Research.
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