An overburdened electricity supply to Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital is to blame for the power disturbances there.
Over the past week the country’s biggest hospital suffered two power outages, which resulted in numerous elective operations being cancelled.
City Power, supplier of electricity to the hospital, on Thursday confirmed the outages were caused by overloading.
City Power spokesman Sol Masolo explained that the demand on electricity to the hospital had exceeded the available supply despite the hospital being connected to its own substation.
According to DA MPL Jack Bloom, there had been inadequate planning.
“We are seeing the results of poor planning and mismanagement as it seems that adequate power provision was not made for the new building at the hospital. Poor maintenance is also a major part of the problem.”
Thomas (not his real name) has been living in pain for months. He walks with the aid of a walker and can’t stand up without assistance.
Following a knee replacement operation earlier this year, Thomas’s knee had gone septic. The electricity supply cut out on Tuesday while he was consulting with a doctor, who had to use the light from his cellphone to continue his examination of Thomas’s knee before the generator kicked in.
He was scheduled to undergo an operation on Wednesday to drain the fluid from his knee, but it was cancelled.
His daughter said she was told by a nurse that Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi had ordered that elective surgeries be stopped “indefinitely”, with only emergency operations to be performed until the problem was fixed.
Motsoaledi’s spokesman, Fidel Hadebe, could not be reached for comment.
The power disruptions have created a ripple effect in delaying the handling of other services, like access to blood test results, that can’t be done when the computers are offline. The hospital also faces a linen shortage as the laundry has been hit.
Bloom said the gas supply to operating theatres had also been affected, “with alarms going off as gas pipeline pressures go down”.
Power was restored to the hospital late on Thursday.
Talk Radio 702 reported that at least 105 operations were cancelled last week.
Speaking on air on Thursday, hospital CEO Johanna More acknowledged there was a problem and explained that the operations were cancelled because they would have been too risky.
Meanwhile, National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) members were expected to march to the hospital on Friday to hand over a memorandum of demands
Nehawu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said auxiliary nurses were being forced to work in the kitchen, in contravention of the requirements of the SA Nursing Council. - The Star