With all three of its steam sterilization machines broken down on Thursday, Royal Inland Hospital had to call off six operations that were slated for Friday and was finding other places to clean surgical instruments.

Hospital Administrator, Marg Brown said that instruments were being taken to the privately run Kamloops Surgical Centre and Shuswap Lake General Hospital as a backup preparation.

Our three steam sterilizers are down and we're working on repairing them, she said.

There have been repairs done over the past few weeks but problems have been ongoing.

The hospital has too switched to making use of disposable surgical supplies as much as probable. Brown did not know the cost of the support plans. Her first priority was to make that certain patients get their surgeries done.

A new autoclave costing approximately $200,000 is on order and should be received within a week’s time, she said. It is going to take a number of days to install and set up the machines.

Royal Inland Hospital's sterilization unit has been beleaguered with troubles in the previous several months. Surgeries were cancelled and rebooked in the month of February after instruments were found to have bits of remains stuck on them.