Bottles of Coca-Cola filled with water and a small power generator made the difference between life and death for children in a Belgrade hospital yesterday. "In the last couple of days we have spent 24 hours without electricity and with a generator that can only supply power to the central light of this ward," said Dr Srdjan Pasic, a paediatrician in The Institute for Mother and Child Health Care.
"Most fans and other machines cannot work without full power supply and we have also been without water for the last 24 hours," Dr Pasic added.
He was taking reporters through the hospital in which at any one time an average of 400 children - from new-borns to teenagers with chronic diseases - used to be treated before the NATO air campaign started two months ago.
The number is now down to about 150 because the hospital cannot handle more at the moment.
"It's like going in a circle: no power, small power generator which runs off diesel but you cannot get diesel; no power, no water because water pumps are power-run," Dr Pasic said.
Most of Belgrade was without electricity or water on yesterday morning after NATO hit power stations for the third night running in widespread raids on Serbia.
Yugoslav health authority officials say 20 hospitals and 30 clinics have been either severely or slightly damaged since the bombing began two months ago.
Priority users such as hospitals and bakeries were being supplied from tanker trucks, the Belgrade water utility said in a statement.
The Institute managed with its own water reserves before the supply was restored.
Prematurely born babies slept in their beds and inside incubators while nurses fed those who were awake. The power was back and machines were keeping the babies warm and alive.
"Fortunately, no one has died so far," said Dr Pasic, adding that there were no guarantees for the future and that many of the children, including those who have to have regular therapy, depend on an uninterrupted power supply.
The 13-storey hospital building, with its huge windows, has twice come close to danger - once when NATO mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy 500 metres away, and again when it hit the Jugoslavija hotel, 400 metres away.
Dr Pasic said the windows shook but did not break. More psychological damage was done to older children.
"Babies do not react to bombing, of course, but older patients do. We talk to them, trying to relax them. "We also provide professional psychological help," said Dr Gordana Bunjevacki, the head of the Institute.
She said the 24 hours without power destroyed all blood products that have to be kept in a deep freezer.
"In order to use them we would have to test them because they were not stored properly due to the lack of power. And we cannot test them because that also requires power," Dr Bunjevacki said.
Two nine-year old children, a girl who had broken her arm in a car crash and boy who had been operated on two days earlier, lay next to each other.
Both said they were in pain and afraid when the air raid sirens go off.