Navua Hospital is grappling with a worsening water shortage that patients and their families say is disrupting basic care, hygiene and sanitation across the facility, with maternity wards among the hardest hit. Those admitted describe having to adapt to a water supply that is largely absent during daytime hours and unreliable at night, forcing patients to queue for scarce flows and buy drinking water out of pocket.
Patient Ateca Cagimaiwasa, admitted to the hospital since Monday, said the water situation “has been like this since I came in.” She told reporters that running water is effectively unavailable during the day and only becomes intermittently accessible at night — typically between 7pm and 8pm — with very weak pressure. “We have to fill water from the tap in the bathroom at night and use it during the day,” she said, adding that after dark patients sometimes wait up to an hour at the bathroom taps to top up containers for daytime needs.
Families say the constraints have forced them to ration stored water for multiple uses, including drinking, bathing and toilet flushing, raising hygiene and infection-control concerns. Many patients said they now wake as early as 5am to bathe before the limited nightly supply runs out. For drinking water, they report buying bottled water from town at their own expense. Parent Samantha Nacewa, whose child is admitted, described conditions as “unbearable,” saying her family had left the hospital to use facilities at home after finding the hospital toilets in a poor state. “The filth in the pan was all the way up to the toilet bowl,” she said.
The shortage appears compounded by an apparent failure to use on-site storage: observers noted several empty and unused water tanks on hospital grounds. Patients and relatives are jointly calling for urgent intervention, warning that the situation is affecting the entire facility and could put patient wellbeing at risk if it continues.
Health Minister Dr Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu declined to provide a direct response, referring queries to the Water Authority of Fiji (WAF). WAF had not replied to requests for comment by the time this edition went to press. The deferral leaves unanswered questions about whether the problem stems from a local mains interruption, storage and distribution failures on the hospital site, or broader supply pressures in the area.
The Navua Hospital shortage comes against a backdrop of wider water-supply challenges across Fiji. The Water Authority has previously acknowledged strain on some treatment plants and announced measures — including pipeline and treatment adjustments earlier this year — to bolster capacity in parts of the Suva corridor. Whether those systemic pressures are linked to the current problems at Navua Hospital has not been confirmed.
Patients and families say they want a rapid, visible response from authorities: restoration of reliable running water, use of on-site tanks where possible, and provision of safe drinking water by the hospital while repairs or supply fixes are arranged. With no clear timeline yet from health or water officials, the hospital community says the shortage remains the pressing development of the moment and is urging accountability and immediate action.
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