Vital hospital therapy pool still closed after six-month problem

A HOSPITAL'S hydrotherapy pool vital to help relieve pain in arthritis sufferers and physiotherapy patients has been closed for nearly seven months because of contamination.

The facility at St Albans City Hospital is used for post-operative care and exercise treatments during the day but it closed in June after a bacterium called Pseudomonas was discovered in the water.

It remains out of action despite assurances at the time of closure from the West Herts Primary Care Trust (PCT) that it would be reopened in August.

Until it closed, the hot pool was used for post-operative care and exercise treatments during the day with sessions for arthritis sufferers in the evenings.

When the Herts Advertiser originally reported on the closure, the pool users said the facility was vital to them maintaining as much mobility as possible.

A spokesperson for the PCT said: "It has taken far, far longer than we anticipated for us to get the water up to the required standard to reopen the pool. We are confident that we will be able to reopen it early in the New Year and apologise for the inconvenience that its closure has caused to those people who use it.